What Could Be Done in the Kernel to Make Strace Happy

Explore a conference talk from the Linux Plumbers Conference that delves into potential kernel improvements to enhance strace functionality. Learn about the challenges faced by strace maintainers and their proposed solutions to overcome kernel API deficiencies. Discover five key issues, including difficulties in determining syscall entry/exit, limitations in invoking wait4 syscall with changed signal masks, low time precision in struct rusage, PID namespace translation problems, and the lack of consistent declarative syscall descriptions. Gain insights into proposed solutions such as extending the ptrace API, introducing a new wait6 syscall, improving time precision in rusage structures, adding a translate_pid syscall, and providing consistent declarative syscall descriptions. Understand how these improvements could lead to more reliable operation of tools like strace and benefit the broader Linux development community.

LPC2018 - What could be done in the kernel to make strace happy