rstrace

rstrace is a Rust implementation of strace for x86 Linux. It allows the user to trace system calls of a process or command.

Unlike strace it can introspect NVIDIA CUDA system calls.

Install

[!NOTE] Currently only x86 Linux is supported. aarch64 support is planned, but MacOS support is out-of-scope.

Binary download

curl -LsSf https://rstrace.xyz/install.sh | sh

Cargo

cargo install rstrace

Usage

rstrace ls /tmp/

To get a quick overview, use rstrace --help

Usage: rstrace [OPTIONS] [ARGS]...

Arguments:
  [ARGS]...  Arguments for the program to trace. e.g. 'ls /tmp/'

Options:
  -o, --output <OUTPUT>  send trace output to FILE instead of stderr
  -t, --timestamp...     Print absolute timestamp. -tt includes microseconds, -ttt uses UNIX timestamps
  -c, --summary-only     Count time, calls, and errors for each syscall and report summary
  -C, --summary          like -c, but also print the regular output
  -j, --summary-json     Count time, calls, and errors for each syscall and report summary in JSON format
      --tef              Emit Trace Event Format (TEF) trace data as output
      --verbose          Output human readable information about CUDA ioctls.
      --cuda             Enable CUDA ioctl sniffing. [Requires 'cuda_sniff' feature]
      --cuda-only        Enable CUDA ioctl sniffing and disable all other output. [Requires 'cuda_sniff' feature]
  -p, --attach <PID>     Attach to the process with the process ID pid and begin tracing.
  -f, --follow-forks     Trace child processes as they are created by currently traced processes as a result of the fork(2), vfork(2) and clone(2) system calls.
      --color            Enable colored output (default)
  -h, --help             Print help
  -V, --version          Print version

cuda_sniff extension

cuda_sniff is an extension to strace-rs that allows the user to trace CUDA API calls. It is based on https://github.com/geohot/cuda_ioctl_sniffer by George Hotz.

gvisor has an alternative implementation called ioct_sniffer which uses LD_PRELOAD to intercept calls, unlike strace-rs which uses ptrace.

Alternatives

• https://github.com/JakWai01/lurk

• https://github.com/strace/strace

• https://github.com/bpftrace/bpftrace

  • Don't use rstrace/strace in production. Where feasible use bpftrace which is a more powerful tracing tool with much lower overhead.