Running ltrace isn't trivial. This RHEL 5.3 system has based on a Tomcat Catalina (servlet container) which uses text scripts to tie everything together. When I tried to find an executable here's the rabbit hole I went down:
/etc/init.d/pki-ca9 calls dtomcat5-pki-ca9
#Path to the tomcat launch script (direct don't use wrapper)
TOMCAT_SCRIPT=/usr/bin/dtomcat5-pki-ca9
/usr/bin/dtomcat5-pki-ca9 calls a watchdog program
/usr/bin/nuxwdog -f $FNAME
I replaced nuxwdog with a wrapper
[root@qantas]# cat /usr/bin/nuxwdog
#!/bin/bash
ltrace -e open -o /tmp/ltrace.$(date +%s) /usr/bin/nuxwdog.bak $@
[root@qantas]# service pki-ca9 start
Starting pki-ca9: [ OK ]
[root@qantas]# cat /tmp/ltrace.1295036985
+++ exited (status 1) +++
This is ugly. How do I run strace or ltrace in tomcat?
UPDATE
Here is the tomcat "process"
[root@qantas]# ps -ef | grep tomcat
pkiuser 21767 21766 0 10:10 ? 00:00:09 /usr/lib/jvm/jre/bin/java
-Djava.endorsed.dirs=/usr/share/tomcat5/common/endorsed
-classpath :/usr/lib/jvm/jre/lib/rt.jar:/usr/share/java/commons-
collections.jar:/usr/share/tomcat5/bin/bootstrap.jar:/usr/share/tomcat5/bin/commons-
logging-api.jar:/usr/share/java/mx4j/mx4j-impl.jar:/usr/share/java/mx4j/mx4j-
jmx.jar:/usr/share/tomcat5/common/lib/nuxwdog.jar -Dcatalina.base=/var/lib/pki-ca11
-Dcatalina.home=/usr/share/tomcat5 -Djava.io.tmpdir=/usr/share/tomcat5/temp
org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap start
Here are all the children
[root@qantas]# pstree -A -p 21767
java(21767)-+-{java}(21768)
|-{java}(21769)
|-{java}(21770)
<..snip..>
`-{java}(22104)
This is what happens when I try to start ltrace on the text script
[root@qantas]# ltrace /usr/bin/dtomcat5-pki-ca11
ltrace: Can't open ELF file "/usr/bin/dtomcat5-pki-ca11"
When I attach ltrace to the parent and let it run for a day there is no output
[root@qantas]# ltrace -e open -o /tmp/ltrace.1295465058 -p 21767
...24 hours later...
[root@qantas]# ls -l /tmp/ltrace.1295465058
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 19 11:24 /tmp/ltrace.1295465058