Tracing process execution

If a process is unresponsive but is consuming a nontrivial amount of CPU time, or if a process is consuming significantly more CPU time than is expected, it might be useful to examine the activity of that process in more detail than can be obtained using a point-in-time snapshot. For example, if a process is performing a significant amount of disk reads and/or writes, it can be useful to see which files are being accessed. Similarly, if a process is consistently exiting abnormally, then beginning tracing for that process just before it exits can help provide additional information that cannot be captured in a core file (and if the process is exiting rather than being terminated for an illegal operation, then no core file may be available).

This can be accomplished using the strace tool on Linux (

).

Consult the strace manual page for additional information.