What problems do people solve with strace? — by Julia Evans

intermediatepageLink only (©)

Summarises about 200 answers on real uses of strace: finding config files and dependencies, working out why a program hangs or is slow, spotting hidden permission errors, and seeing which commands a program runs.

Read the full article on jvns.ca

Source: What problems do people solve with strace? by Julia Evans. Licence: Link only (©).

Source reviewed: 2026-11-02
Link checked: 2026-11-02
Tested hands-on: Not by Oddbyte.Me

stracedebugging

More in Linux

Notes on clarifying man pages — by Julia Evans

beginnerpage

A tour of what makes man pages easy to use: rsync's terse synopsis with a one-line option summary, strace's categorised options, curl's per-option examples, and the value of examples and tables of contents.

SystemMonitoring — by Debian Wiki

beginnerpage

A portal of monitoring tools grouped by purpose; notably points to journalctl -b for current-boot logs and systemd-analyze (time, blame, critical-chain) for boot timing.

A list of new(ish) command line tools — by Julia Evans

intermediatepage

A curated list of newer command-line tools gathered from suggestions, grouped as modern replacements for standard utilities, tools that work differently, and JSON/CSV/grep-style helpers. Mentions ripgrep, fd, fzf, bat, direnv, jq and vidir.