Troubleshooting with strace
Best Practices for System Tracing
To get the most out of system tracing, keep the following best practices in mind when using strace:
- Filter what you trace. Use
-e trace=...to focus on relevant system calls. - Follow child processes. Use
-fto trace across process boundaries. - Control output verbosity. Use
-vfor more details or-e abbrev=...to reduce output. - Save output for analysis. Use
-o file.txtto save traces for later review. - Consider performance impacts. Tracing adds overhead; be careful on production systems.
- Combine with other tools. Use
dmesg, logs, and other diagnostics alongside tracing.
Conclusion
System tracing with tools like strace provides visibility into the critical interface between applications and the Linux kernel. As you have seen in these four scenarios, this visibility can help diagnose a wide range of issues – from missing files to memory problems, from crashes to performance bottlenecks.
By understanding the system calls your applications make, you gain insights that would be difficult or impossible to obtain through other means. This knowledge allows you to solve problems more efficiently and design more robust, performant software.
The next time you face a mysterious Linux issue, remember to reach for strace and its tracing cousins. The system call interface reveals the truth about what's really happening in your system.
Infos
- strace man page: https://man7.orghttp:///linux/man-pages/man1/strace.1.html
The Author
Ajinkya Kadam is a Senior Site Reliability Engineer with over 10 years of experience designing and maintaining highly resilient, high-traffic infrastructure. He specializes in Linux performance analysis, troubleshooting, and applying advanced tracing techniques to solve complex production issues.
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