From: Richard K. <rj...@te...> - 2001-10-17 12:58:27
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Just a thought, but... Occasionally strace output includes encoded DNS packets and so on. As part of the debugging of a program it can be useful to know what DNS queries it is making and what answers it is receiving; currently the only sensible ways to do this (i.e. examing BIND debug output, or tcpdump'ing the relevant DNS traffic) require more privilege than the user may have. (Manually decoding the DNS packet isn't "sensible".) So, a useful feature for strace might be to be able to mark certain FDs for decoding according to a chosen protocol, and have human-readable packet contents appear in the strace output. DNS need not be the only protocol so supported, but it would be the first one I'd find useful. Plain-text protocols such as SMTP don't need any special support, of course. Any thoughts? If I were to take the time to implement this feature, would it be likely to be included? ttfn/rjk |
From: Richard K. <rj...@te...> - 2001-10-18 15:08:23
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Richard Kettlewell <rj...@te...> writes: [...] > So, a useful feature for strace might be to be able to mark certain > FDs for decoding according to a chosen protocol, and have > human-readable packet contents appear in the strace output. > > DNS need not be the only protocol so supported, but it would be the > first one I'd find useful. Plain-text protocols such as SMTP don't > need any special support, of course. > > Any thoughts? If I were to take the time to implement this feature, > would it be likely to be included? I went and implemented this last night anyway, though practically all the code is non-strace-specific and I have an additional use for it in mind, so I don't feel I'll have wasted any time if the answer is "this will never be included in strace". I'll probably send a full patch sometime this evening, if I get a chance to test it a bit more (not certain, since we'll probably be reconfiguring the computer room). If anyone is interested the generic part of the change is at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ucgi/~richardk/cvsweb/dns/ but this does not include the strace integration! ttfn/rjk |