5 ms·

Strace-macOS: A clone of the strace command for macOS

108 points by signa11 1y ago

sandbags 1y ago
Modulo I haven’t tried it yet it’s been an irritant that SIP broke tracing so this is a welcome development, thank you.
- musicale 11mo ago
  dtruss(1m) RIP
comex 1y ago
Neat, though I'm guessing it's pretty slow. Tip for anyone reading: If you only need to trace file accesses or command executions, `eslogger lookup` and `eslogger exec` respectively will give you what you need (albeit in the form of a not-particularly-friendly JSON blob).
cyberpunk 1y ago
Silly question but doesn’t macos ship with dtrace? So why not use dtruss?
- saagarjha 1y ago
  You need to disable SIP to use DTrace
  - Citizen8396 1y ago
    Not entirely. You can selectively remove protections: csrutil enable --without dtrace
    - saagarjha 11mo ago
      That’s disabling SIP
- owyn 1y ago
  dtruss requires disabling SIP. This seems like a better option for basic "what just happened?" debugging.
- agsnu 1y ago
  Barely supported by Apple these days - in addition to needing to disable SIP which is a pain, it was broken causing system freezes for several major macOS releases.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Another silly question, did everyone forgot about instruments?
  - youngtaff 1y ago
    Isn't Instruments built on dtrace?
  - viraptor 1y ago
    Does instruments allow you to track file reads/writes and other syscalls/mach stuff? Their docs are quite bad at describing the capabilities, so I'm not really sure. From what I can see it's a profiler rather than a tracing tool.
CGamesPlay 1y ago
Love it. I've never successfully used dtruss without hardlocking my system, so it's nice to see that this isn't a wrapper around that.
- saagarjha 1y ago
  The bug for this was fixed in Tahoe
  - viraptor 1y ago
    For the whole dtrace system?
    - saagarjha 11mo ago
      Yes
      - StrangeDoctor 11mo ago
        Fantastic news, thanks for sharing. I stopped looking into it after some spectacularly bad hard lockups, some in prod…
        saagarjha 11mo ago
        Considering you need to turn off SIP to use it, I would not recommend using DTrace in prod…
        viraptor 11mo ago
        You need to escalate to root to run it anyway. If anyone can get root on my laptop, there's nothing that SIP can realistically protect me from. Actually, if anyone can get access to my user outside of sandbox, everything I care about is already exposed. (Also, you can disable it only for dtrace if you want)
burnt-resistor 1y ago
Doesn't appear to work, and lacks pypi and brew packaging. $ pipx install git+https://github.com/Mic92/strace-macos installed package strace-macos 0.1.0, installed using Python 3.13.7 These apps are now globally available - strace done! $ strace df -h Error: Failed to load LLDB Python module. Make sure you're running with system Python (/usr/bin/python3) and have Xcode Command Line Tools installed. To install Xcode Command Line Tools: xcode-select --install $ sudo strace df -h [same shit] After fixing[0] the awkward python system requirement, it doesn't work with built-in binaries without SIP disabled, it's really slow, it colorizes output even when piping, and the colors are terrible. Better than nothing but it's currently less effort to temporarily disable SIP for dtruss and reenable it later than install this in this early form. Maybe with time it will improve, but it seems like a vehicle to aggressively advertise consulting services. 0: env PIPX_DEFAULT_PYTHON='/usr/bin/python3' pipx install git+https://github.com/Mic92/strace-macos
- soraminazuki 11mo ago
  It’s working. You deliberately ignored the requirements clearly stated multiple times in the README, which explains that it must use the same version of Python as LLDB because it relies on LLDB's Python bindings. The tool even explained again what you should do instead after you defied the installation instructions, yet you chose to run the same command again with sudo, turning this into a spectacle. This isn’t a software issue. It’s you messing around. > it seems like a vehicle to aggressively advertise consulting services. It's an open source tool that addresses a pain point many people have, made with someone's spare time with no strings attached. What is wrong with you? > it doesn't work with built-in binaries without SIP disabled You can't debug system binaries on macOS with SIP. That's the whole point of SIP. Debugging user binaries is still very much allowed. sudo lldb /bin/ls Password: (lldb) target create "/bin/ls" Current executable set to '/bin/ls' (arm64e). (lldb) r error: process exited with status -1 (attach failed (Not allowed to attach to process. Look in the console messages (Console.app), near the debugserver entries, when the attach failed. The subsystem that denied the attach permission will likely have logged an informative message about why it was denied.)) > lacks pypi and brew packaging That's an entitled complaint against a project made just 2 days ago [1], which offers a single line command for installation. [1]: https://github.com/Mic92/strace-macos/commit/712aaf14d07f2efa48a65e44e03d735242e3b29c https://github.com/Mic92/strace-macos/commit/712aaf14d07f2ef...
gkfasdfasdf 1y ago
TIL Nix flakes work on macos - is this a legit alternative to homebrew?
- arianvanp 1y ago
  Yes. It's great. Especially paired with nix-darwin which allows you to declaratively manage all your macos settings too
  - pasc1878 1y ago
    Sort of. For things that run on Linux and other Unices yes. For macOS UI programs and those that need specific permissions and for commercial programs stick with Homebrew but you can define what you want in homebrew in nix.
    - rusty-jules 11mo ago
      Using nix-darwin to manage brew declaratively feels like using a jackhammer to nail a picture to the wall, but I can’t live without it anymore.
BirAdam 1y ago
This triggered a small emotional reaction. I really miss the days when Apple made real effort toward servers with MacOS X Server and Xserve. Hopefully, since they're using their own hardware/software internally for servers, Apple may one day go back down that road.
Andrew-Tate 11mo ago
[flagged]
- aspect0545 11mo ago
  What’s up with that user name
  - zahlman 11mo ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Andrew-Tate https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Andrew-Tate Turn on showdead; it's pretty clearly some sort of AI bot.

108 points by signa11 1y ago

sandbags 1y ago

Modulo I haven’t tried it yet it’s been an irritant that SIP broke tracing so this is a welcome development, thank you.

musicale 11mo ago
dtruss(1m) RIP

comex 1y ago

Neat, though I'm guessing it's pretty slow. Tip for anyone reading: If you only need to trace file accesses or command executions, `eslogger lookup` and `eslogger exec` respectively will give you what you need (albeit in the form of a not-particularly-friendly JSON blob).

cyberpunk 1y ago

Silly question but doesn’t macos ship with dtrace? So why not use dtruss?

saagarjha 1y ago
You need to disable SIP to use DTrace
- Citizen8396 1y ago
  Not entirely. You can selectively remove protections: csrutil enable --without dtrace
  - saagarjha 11mo ago
    That’s disabling SIP
owyn 1y ago
dtruss requires disabling SIP. This seems like a better option for basic "what just happened?" debugging.
agsnu 1y ago
Barely supported by Apple these days - in addition to needing to disable SIP which is a pain, it was broken causing system freezes for several major macOS releases.
pjmlp 1y ago
Another silly question, did everyone forgot about instruments?
- youngtaff 1y ago
  Isn't Instruments built on dtrace?
- viraptor 1y ago
  Does instruments allow you to track file reads/writes and other syscalls/mach stuff? Their docs are quite bad at describing the capabilities, so I'm not really sure. From what I can see it's a profiler rather than a tracing tool.

CGamesPlay 1y ago

Love it. I've never successfully used dtruss without hardlocking my system, so it's nice to see that this isn't a wrapper around that.

saagarjha 1y ago
The bug for this was fixed in Tahoe
- viraptor 1y ago
  For the whole dtrace system?
  - saagarjha 11mo ago
    Yes
    - StrangeDoctor 11mo ago
      Fantastic news, thanks for sharing. I stopped looking into it after some spectacularly bad hard lockups, some in prod…
      - saagarjha 11mo ago
        Considering you need to turn off SIP to use it, I would not recommend using DTrace in prod…
        viraptor 11mo ago
        You need to escalate to root to run it anyway. If anyone can get root on my laptop, there's nothing that SIP can realistically protect me from. Actually, if anyone can get access to my user outside of sandbox, everything I care about is already exposed. (Also, you can disable it only for dtrace if you want)

burnt-resistor 1y ago

Doesn't appear to work, and lacks pypi and brew packaging. $ pipx install git+https://github.com/Mic92/strace-macos installed package strace-macos 0.1.0, installed using Python 3.13.7 These apps are now globally available - strace done! $ strace df -h Error: Failed to load LLDB Python module. Make sure you're running with system Python (/usr/bin/python3) and have Xcode Command Line Tools installed. To install Xcode Command Line Tools: xcode-select --install $ sudo strace df -h [same shit] After fixing[0] the awkward python system requirement, it doesn't work with built-in binaries without SIP disabled, it's really slow, it colorizes output even when piping, and the colors are terrible. Better than nothing but it's currently less effort to temporarily disable SIP for dtruss and reenable it later than install this in this early form. Maybe with time it will improve, but it seems like a vehicle to aggressively advertise consulting services. 0: env PIPX_DEFAULT_PYTHON='/usr/bin/python3' pipx install git+https://github.com/Mic92/strace-macos

soraminazuki 11mo ago
It’s working. You deliberately ignored the requirements clearly stated multiple times in the README, which explains that it must use the same version of Python as LLDB because it relies on LLDB's Python bindings. The tool even explained again what you should do instead after you defied the installation instructions, yet you chose to run the same command again with sudo, turning this into a spectacle. This isn’t a software issue. It’s you messing around. > it seems like a vehicle to aggressively advertise consulting services. It's an open source tool that addresses a pain point many people have, made with someone's spare time with no strings attached. What is wrong with you? > it doesn't work with built-in binaries without SIP disabled You can't debug system binaries on macOS with SIP. That's the whole point of SIP. Debugging user binaries is still very much allowed. sudo lldb /bin/ls Password: (lldb) target create "/bin/ls" Current executable set to '/bin/ls' (arm64e). (lldb) r error: process exited with status -1 (attach failed (Not allowed to attach to process. Look in the console messages (Console.app), near the debugserver entries, when the attach failed. The subsystem that denied the attach permission will likely have logged an informative message about why it was denied.)) > lacks pypi and brew packaging That's an entitled complaint against a project made just 2 days ago [1], which offers a single line command for installation. [1]: https://github.com/Mic92/strace-macos/commit/712aaf14d07f2efa48a65e44e03d735242e3b29c https://github.com/Mic92/strace-macos/commit/712aaf14d07f2ef...

gkfasdfasdf 1y ago

TIL Nix flakes work on macos - is this a legit alternative to homebrew?

arianvanp 1y ago
Yes. It's great. Especially paired with nix-darwin which allows you to declaratively manage all your macos settings too
- pasc1878 1y ago
  Sort of. For things that run on Linux and other Unices yes. For macOS UI programs and those that need specific permissions and for commercial programs stick with Homebrew but you can define what you want in homebrew in nix.
  - rusty-jules 11mo ago
    Using nix-darwin to manage brew declaratively feels like using a jackhammer to nail a picture to the wall, but I can’t live without it anymore.

BirAdam 1y ago

This triggered a small emotional reaction. I really miss the days when Apple made real effort toward servers with MacOS X Server and Xserve. Hopefully, since they're using their own hardware/software internally for servers, Apple may one day go back down that road.

Andrew-Tate 11mo ago

[flagged]

aspect0545 11mo ago
What’s up with that user name
- zahlman 11mo ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Andrew-Tate https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Andrew-Tate Turn on showdead; it's pretty clearly some sort of AI bot.