CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxprocesspidstraceptrace
Nordlöw
Nordlöw

Reputation: 12138

Ptracing Process Trees

I'm looking for code examples on how to use the Linux system call ptrace() to trace system calls of a process and all its child, grandchild, etc processes. Similar to the behaviour of strace when it is fed the fork flag -f.

I'm aware of the alternative of looking into the sources of strace but I'm asking for a clean tutorial first in the hopes of getting a more isolated explanation.

I'm gonna use this to implement a fast generic system call memoizer similar to https://github.com/nordlow/strace-memoize but written in a compiled language. My current code examples I want to extend with this logic is my fork of ministrace at https://github.com/nordlow/ministrace/blob/master/ministrace.c

Upvotes: 0

Views: 295

Answers (1)

Shachar Shemesh
Shachar Shemesh

Reputation: 8573

RTFM PTRACE_SETOPTIONS with the PTRACE_O_TRACECLONE, PTRACE_O_TRACEFORK and PTRACE_O_TRACEVFORK flags. In a nutshell, if you set it on a process, any time it creates children, those will automatically be traced as well.

Upvotes: 1

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