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Find files that were modified by a given command

Terminal - Find files that were modified by a given command
strace <name of the program>
2009-08-31 20:42:50
User: eitland
Functions: strace
4
Up
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Find files that were modified by a given command

Traces the system calls of a program. See http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2006/05/strace-very-powerful-troubleshooting.html for more information.

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Alternatives

There is 1 alternative - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
touch /tmp/file ; $EXECUTECOMMAND ; find /path -newer /tmp/file
2009-08-31 18:47:19
User: matthewdavis
Functions: find touch
17
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Find files that were modified by a given command

This has helped me numerous times trying to find either log files or tmp files that get created after execution of a command. And really eye opening as to how active a given process really is. Play around with -anewer, -cnewer & -newerXY

Show sample output | Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

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What others think

Although be warned strace catches extra junk such as linker activity and process setup even before the program you desire is exec'd.

Comment by bwoodacre 52 weeks and 2 days ago

Yeah, at least use "-e file" with it, or better yet look at something like "dpkg-depcheck" which actually interprets strace output specifically with this in mind...

Comment by eichin 52 weeks and 2 days ago

Advantage of the strace against t

touch /tmp/file ; $EXECUTECOMMAND ; find /path -newer /tmp/file

is that you don't have to wait for find.

Comment by eitland 52 weeks and 2 days ago

Surely the strace command is different from the touch-exec-find combo? The latter will find all files changed within a time window, meaning that they could have been modified by any other process. The strace command will ONLY show files modified by the specific process. Right?

Comment by sandman 52 weeks and 2 days ago

That is true, the touch-exec-find combo will find other files. But its useful for quick & dirty commands.

strace -ff |grep open

would probably suffice to truly find all files touched by a given command.

Comment by matthewdavis 52 weeks and 2 days ago

dpkg-depcheck is available in the 'devscripts' package, for those running debian/ubuntu.

Comment by bwoodacre 52 weeks and 1 day ago

Your point of view

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