lurk

lurk is a simple and pretty alternative to strace. It allows the user to trace system calls of a process or of a command. In contrast to strace, lurk focuses on a simple, yet pretty, user experience while implementing the most important use cases of strace.

Demo

Features

• Supports an opinionated subset of strace flags.
• Supports JSON output for further processing via e.g. jq
• Uses colorized, formatted output ;-).

Installation

cURL

curl -L -o /tmp/lurk.tar.gz "https://github.com/JakWai01/lurk/releases/latest/download/lurk-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz"
tar -xzf /tmp/lurk.tar.gz -C /tmp
sudo install /tmp/lurk /usr/local/bin

Cargo

cargo install lurk-cli

Arch Linux

pacman -S lurk

Usage

To get a quick overview, you can run lurk --help:

lurk 0.2.7

USAGE:
    lurk [OPTIONS] [command]...

ARGS:
    <command>...    Trace command

OPTIONS:
    -c, --summary-only
            Report a summary instead of the regular output

    -C, --summary
            Report a summary in addition to the regular output

    -e, --expr <expr>
            A qualifying expression which modifies which events to trace or how to trace them.

    -E, --env <env>
            --env var=val adds an environment variable. --env var removes an environment variable.

    -f, --follow-forks
            Trace child processes as they are created by currently traced processes.

    -h, --help
            Print help information

    -j, --json
            Display output in JSON format

    -n, --syscall-number
            Display system call numbers

    -o, --file <file>
            Name of the file to print output to

    -p, --attach <attach>
            Attach to a running process

    -s, --string-limit <string-limit>
            Maximum string size to print

    -T, --syscall-times
            Show the time spent in system calls in ms.

    -u, --username <username>
            Run the command with uid, gid and supplementary groups of username.

    -v, --no-abbrev
            Print unabbreviated versions of strings

    -V, --version
            Print version information

    -z, --successful-only
            Print only syscalls that returned without an error code

    -Z, --failed-only
            Print only syscalls that returned with an error code

Basic trace

Basically, there are two ways of tracing system calls. You can either execute a command directly or attach to a running process by providing the process ID (PID) via --attach. In the latter case, the command has to be run with escalated privileges (sudo).

Executing a command

$ lurk ls
[54605] execve("", "", "") = 0
[54605] brk(NULL) = 0x55578000
[54605] arch_prctl(12289, 0xffffe780) = -22
[54605] access("", 4) = -2
[54605] openat(4294967196, "/etc/ld.so.cache", 524288) = 3
[54605] newfstatat(3, "", 0xffffd9a0, 4096) = 0
[54605] mmap(NULL, 92599, 1, 2, 3, 0) = 0xf7fa9000
...

Attaching to a running process

$ sudo lurk --attach $PID
[54683] epoll_wait(5, 0xd01a3c20, 8, 4294967295) = -4
[54683] recvmsg(3, 0x4a4a0020, 0) = -11
[54683] recvmsg(3, 0x4a4a0020, 0) = -11
[54683] clock_gettime(1, 0x4a49df40) = 0
[54683] clock_gettime(1, 0x4a4a0220) = 0
[54683] recvmsg(3, 0x4a4a0050, 0) = -11
...

Filtering with --expr

Unlike in strace, lurk only supports --expr trace. Since this flag behaves almost exactly like in strace, here a short, slightly changed, excerpt of the strace manpage on how to use lurk --expr trace:

 -e trace=syscall_set
       --trace=syscall_set
              Trace only the specified set of system calls.  syscall_set
              is defined as [!]value[,value], and value can be one of
              the following:

              syscall
                     Trace specific syscall, specified by its name (but
                     see NOTES).

              ?value Question mark before the syscall qualification
                     allows suppression of error in case no syscalls
                     matched the qualification provided.

              /regex Trace only those system calls that match the regex.
                     You can use POSIX Extended Regular Expression
                     syntax (see regex(7)).

              %file
              file   Trace all system calls which take a file name as an
                     argument.  You can think of this as an abbreviation
                     for -e trace=open,stat,chmod,unlink,...  which is
                     useful to seeing what files the process is
                     referencing.  Furthermore, using the abbreviation
                     will ensure that you don't accidentally forget to
                     include a call like lstat(2) in the list.  Betchya
                     woulda forgot that one.  The syntax without a
                     preceding percent sign ("-e trace=file") is
                     deprecated.

              %process
              process
                     Trace system calls associated with process
                     lifecycle (creation, exec, termination).  The
                     syntax without a preceding percent sign ("-e
                     trace=process") is deprecated.

              %net
              %network
              network
                     Trace all the network related system calls.  The
                     syntax without a preceding percent sign ("-e
                     trace=network") is deprecated.

              %signal
              signal Trace all signal related system calls.  The syntax
                     without a preceding percent sign ("-e
                     trace=signal") is deprecated.

              %ipc
              ipc    Trace all IPC related system calls.  The syntax
                     without a preceding percent sign ("-e trace=ipc")
                     is deprecated.

              %desc
              desc   Trace all file descriptor related system calls.
                     The syntax without a preceding percent sign ("-e
                     trace=desc") is deprecated.

              %memory
              memory Trace all memory mapping related system calls.  The
                     syntax without a preceding percent sign ("-e
                     trace=memory") is deprecated.

              %creds Trace system calls that read or modify user and
                     group identifiers or capability sets.

              %stat  Trace stat syscall variants.

              %lstat Trace lstat syscall variants.

              %fstat Trace fstat, fstatat, and statx syscall variants.

              %%stat Trace syscalls used for requesting file status
                     (stat, lstat, fstat, fstatat, statx, and their
                     variants).

              %statfs
                     Trace statfs, statfs64, statvfs, osf_statfs, and
                     osf_statfs64 system calls.  The same effect can be
                     achieved with -e trace=/^(.*_)?statv?fs regular
                     expression.

              %fstatfs
                     Trace fstatfs, fstatfs64, fstatvfs, osf_fstatfs,
                     and osf_fstatfs64 system calls.  The same effect
                     can be achieved with -e trace=/fstatv?fs regular
                     expression.

              %%statfs
                     Trace syscalls related to file system statistics
                     (statfs-like, fstatfs-like, and ustat).  The same
                     effect can be achieved with
                     -e trace=/statv?fs|fsstat|ustat regular expression.

              %clock Trace system calls that read or modify system
                     clocks.

              %pure  Trace syscalls that always succeed and have no
                     arguments.  Currently, this list includes
                     arc_gettls(2), getdtablesize(2), getegid(2),
                     getegid32(2), geteuid(2), geteuid32(2), getgid(2),
                     getgid32(2), getpagesize(2), getpgrp(2), getpid(2),
                     getppid(2), get_thread_area(2) (on architectures
                     other than x86), gettid(2), get_tls(2), getuid(2),
                     getuid32(2), getxgid(2), getxpid(2), getxuid(2),
                     kern_features(2), and metag_get_tls(2) syscalls.

              The -c option is useful for determining which system calls
              might be useful to trace.  For example,
              trace=open,close,read,write means to only trace those four
              system calls.  Be careful when making inferences about the
              user/kernel boundary if only a subset of system calls are
              being monitored.  The default is trace=all.

Note: When negating a statement with !, make sure to escape it (\!) when using bash.

Filtering for system calls not containing the letter o

$ lurk --expr trace=\!/o ls
[55155] execve("", "", "") = 0
[55155] brk(NULL) = 0x55578000
[55155] arch_prctl(12289, 0xffffe780) = -22
[55155] access("", 4) = -2
[55155] newfstatat(3, "", 0xffffd9a0, 4096) = 0
[55155] mmap(NULL, 92599, 1, 2, 3, 0) = 0xf7fa9000
[55155] read(3, "\u{7f}ELF\u{2}\u{1}\u{1}", 832) = 832
...

Filtering only for all system calls taking a file as an argument

$ lurk --expr trace=%file ls
[55121] access("", 4) = -2
[55121] openat(4294967196, "/etc/ld.so.cache", 524288) = 3
[55121] newfstatat(3, "", 0xffffd9a0, 4096) = 0
[55121] openat(4294967196, "/usr/lib/libcap.so.2", 524288) = 3
[55121] newfstatat(3, "", 0xffffd9a0, 4096) = 0
[55121] openat(4294967196, "/usr/lib/libc.so.6", 524288) = 3
[55121] newfstatat(3, "", 0xffffd980, 4096) = 0
...

Suppress error for prctl system call

$ lurk --expr trace=?prctl ls
[55407] execve("", "", "") = 0
[55407] brk(NULL) = 0x55578000
[55407] arch_prctl(12289, 0xffffe780) = -22
[55407] access("", 4) = -2
[55407] openat(4294967196, "/etc/ld.so.cache", 524288) = 3
[55407] newfstatat(3, "", 0xffffd9a0, 4096) = 0
[55407] mmap(NULL, 92599, 1, 2, 3, 0) = 0xf7fa9000

Only output openat, close and mmap system calls

$ lurk --expr trace=openat,close,mmap ls
[55440] openat(4294967196, "/etc/ld.so.cache", 524288) = 3
[55440] mmap(NULL, 92599, 1, 2, 3, 0) = 0xf7fa9000
[55440] close(3) = 0
[55440] openat(4294967196, "/usr/lib/libcap.so.2", 524288) = 3
[55440] mmap(NULL, 8192, 3, 34, 4294967295, 0) = 0xf7fa7000
[55440] mmap(NULL, 45128, 1, 2050, 3, 0) = 0xf7f9b000
[55440] mmap(0xf7f9e000, 20480, 5, 2066, 3, 12288) = 0xf7f9e000

Using as a Rust library

See the tracer example.

Acknowledgements

• sharkdp/fd as an inspiration on how to structure a Rust CLI and its README.
• All maintainers of the dependencies used to create lurk and all of those who answered my questions regarding ptrace.

License

lurk (c) 2022-2023 Jakob Waibel, Yuri Astrakhan, and contributors

SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT OR Apache-2.0