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I'm attempting to debug an application on Ubuntu - I need to listen to file open attempts (even for files that don't exist).

FileMon is available on Windows - what's on Ubuntu's utility belt?

Thanks!

Ashley

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You're looking for strace. Have a look here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Strace

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Thanks Evan! - I'll have a crack tonight. – chickeninabiscuit Jul 7 '09 at 3:49
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up vote 5 down vote

It depends on what you want:

  • In the large, you want to look at inotify to see all file accesses that any process makes.

  • In the small, strace will let you watch the syscalls a particular process makes. Strace is pretty awesome. You can trace a process's calls to 'open' by doing strace -f -eopen $cmd, for instance. The man page has full details on syntax, of course.

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Thanks pjz. To be very specific - i'm having some trouble getting started with Ogre3d on Ubuntu. My test application seems to be looking for some .cfg files during start-up. I want to listen to all attempts to open files so i can ensure the correct files are available and have the correct permissions. – chickeninabiscuit Jul 7 '09 at 3:59
strace -e open ./app – Justin Jan 23 '10 at 0:32
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up vote 2 down vote

strace in front of an starting application is good to watch what the app is doing.
lsof is nice to see which files an already running app is using.

BTW:
lsof -ni:22 shows which process is using Port 22.

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up vote 2 down vote

SGI has a tool that you might want to try: http://oss.sgi.com/projects/fam/

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under linux fam is history. Really use inotify nowadays – ThorstenS Jul 7 '09 at 10:45
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up vote 0 down vote

This calls for help by Mortadelo. http://gitorious.org/mortadelo

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