Debugging On Linux – Strace

A few years ago, I was taking a few classes from a very up and coming computer science university and during the course of one projects class came to discuss with the instructor the differences between the average students and those excelling. We determined the main differences to be, three in number:

  1. Time and dedication
  2. The ability to tinker and figure things out on one’s own
  3. The art of debugging.

The art of debugging is really quite simple, it is mostly knowing the tools available and how to use them. On the linux platform, surely one of the most powerful and certainly most thorough debugging tool one can use is strace.
Continue reading