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README

      1 This is strace, a system call tracer for Linux.
      2 
      3 strace is released under a Berkeley-style license at the request
      4 of Paul Kranenburg; see the file COPYING for details.
      5 
      6 See the file CREDITS for a list of authors and other contributors.
      7 
      8 See the file INSTALL for compilation and installation instructions.
      9 
     10 See the file NEWS for information on what has changed in recent
     11 versions.
     12 
     13 You can get the latest version of strace from its homepage at
     14 http://sourceforge.net/projects/strace/ .
     15 
     16 Please send bug reports and enhancements to the strace
     17 mailinglist at strace-devel (a] lists.sourceforge.net.
     18

README-hacking

      1 Requirements
      2 ============
      3 If you use the GIT version of strace there will be some files missing
      4 that you need to build strace.  These files are generated by tools from
      5 the GNU Autoconf and Automake packages.
      6 
      7 Note: rather than run `autoreconf' directly, use the `./bootstrap' script.
      8 
      9 
     10 No more ChangeLog file
     11 ======================
     12 Do not create or modify the ChangeLog files.  Starting at 2009-07-09, the
     13 policy changed.  Before, we would insert the exact same text (or worse,
     14 sometimes slightly differing) into both the ChangeLog file and the commit
     15 log.  Now we put that information only in the commit log, and generate
     16 the top-level ChangeLog file from logs at "make dist" time.  As such,
     17 there are strict requirements on the form of the commit log messages.
     18 
     19 
     20 Commit log requirements
     21 =======================
     22 Each commit log should always start with a one-line summary, the second
     23 line should be blank, and the remaining lines are usually ChangeLog-style
     24 entries for all affected files, except the leading TABs which should
     25 be omitted.
     26 
     27 
     28 Documentation
     29 =============
     30 All noteworthy changes should be mentioned in NEWS.  All changes in strace
     31 command interface should be reflected in the man page.  New options should
     32 be documented both in -h output and in the man page.
     33

README-linux-ptrace

      1 This document describes Linux ptrace implementation in Linux kernels
      2 version 3.0.0. (Update this notice if you update the document
      3 to reflect newer kernels).
      4 
      5 
      6 		Ptrace userspace API.
      7 
      8 Ptrace API (ab)uses standard Unix parent/child signaling over waitpid.
      9 An unfortunate effect of it is that resulting API is complex and has
     10 subtle quirks. This document aims to describe these quirks.
     11 
     12 Debugged processes (tracees) first need to be attached to the debugging
     13 process (tracer). Attachment and subsequent commands are per-thread: in
     14 multi-threaded process, every thread can be individually attached to a
     15 (potentially different) tracer, or left not attached and thus not
     16 debugged. Therefore, "tracee" always means "(one) thread", never "a
     17 (possibly multi-threaded) process". Ptrace commands are always sent to
     18 a specific tracee using ptrace(PTRACE_foo, pid, ...), where pid is a
     19 TID of the corresponding Linux thread.
     20 
     21 After attachment, each tracee can be in two states: running or stopped.
     22 
     23 There are many kinds of states when tracee is stopped, and in ptrace
     24 discussions they are often conflated. Therefore, it is important to use
     25 precise terms.
     26 
     27 In this document, any stopped state in which tracee is ready to accept
     28 ptrace commands from the tracer is called ptrace-stop. Ptrace-stops can
     29 be further subdivided into signal-delivery-stop, group-stop,
     30 syscall-stop and so on. They are described in detail later.
     31 
     32 
     33 	1.x Death under ptrace.
     34 
     35 When a (possibly multi-threaded) process receives a killing signal (a
     36 signal set to SIG_DFL and whose default action is to kill the process),
     37 all threads exit. Tracees report their death to the tracer(s). This is
     38 not a ptrace-stop (because tracer can't query tracee status such as
     39 register contents, cannot restart tracee etc) but the notification
     40 about this event is delivered through waitpid API similarly to
     41 ptrace-stop.
     42 
     43 Note that killing signal will first cause signal-delivery-stop (on one
     44 tracee only), and only after it is injected by tracer (or after it was
     45 dispatched to a thread which isn't traced), death from signal will
     46 happen on ALL tracees within multi-threaded process.
     47 
     48 SIGKILL operates similarly, with exceptions. No signal-delivery-stop is
     49 generated for SIGKILL and therefore tracer can't suppress it. SIGKILL
     50 kills even within syscalls (syscall-exit-stop is not generated prior to
     51 death by SIGKILL). The net effect is that SIGKILL always kills the
     52 process (all its threads), even if some threads of the process are
     53 ptraced.
     54 
     55 Tracer can kill a tracee with ptrace(PTRACE_KILL, pid, 0, 0). This
     56 operation is deprecated, use kill/tgkill(SIGKILL) instead.
     57 
     58 ^^^ Oleg prefers to deprecate it instead of describing (and needing to
     59 support) PTRACE_KILL's quirks.
     60 
     61 When tracee executes exit syscall, it reports its death to its tracer.
     62 Other threads are not affected.
     63 
     64 When any thread executes exit_group syscall, every tracee in its thread
     65 group reports its death to its tracer.
     66 
     67 If PTRACE_O_TRACEEXIT option is on, PTRACE_EVENT_EXIT will happen
     68 before actual death. This applies to exits on exit syscall, group_exit
     69 syscall, signal deaths (except SIGKILL), and when threads are torn down
     70 on execve in multi-threaded process.
     71 
     72 Tracer cannot assume that ptrace-stopped tracee exists. There are many
     73 scenarios when tracee may die while stopped (such as SIGKILL).
     74 Therefore, tracer must always be prepared to handle ESRCH error on any
     75 ptrace operation. Unfortunately, the same error is returned if tracee
     76 exists but is not ptrace-stopped (for commands which require stopped
     77 tracee), or if it is not traced by process which issued ptrace call.
     78 Tracer needs to keep track of stopped/running state, and interpret
     79 ESRCH as "tracee died unexpectedly" only if it knows that tracee has
     80 been observed to enter ptrace-stop. Note that there is no guarantee
     81 that waitpid(WNOHANG) will reliably report tracee's death status if
     82 ptrace operation returned ESRCH. waitpid(WNOHANG) may return 0 instead.
     83 IOW: tracee may be "not yet fully dead" but already refusing ptrace ops.
     84 
     85 Tracer can not assume that tracee ALWAYS ends its life by reporting
     86 WIFEXITED(status) or WIFSIGNALED(status).
     87 
     88 ??? or can it? Do we include such a promise into ptrace API?
     89 
     90 
     91 	1.x Stopped states.
     92 
     93 When running tracee enters ptrace-stop, it notifies its tracer using
     94 waitpid API. Tracer should use waitpid family of syscalls to wait for
     95 tracee to stop. Most of this document assumes that tracer waits with:
     96 
     97 	pid = waitpid(pid_or_minus_1, &status, __WALL);
     98 
     99 Ptrace-stopped tracees are reported as returns with pid > 0 and
    100 WIFSTOPPED(status) == true.
    101 
    102 ??? Do we require __WALL usage, or will just using 0 be ok? Are the
    103 rules different if user wants to use waitid? Will waitid require
    104 WEXITED?
    105 
    106 __WALL value does not include WSTOPPED and WEXITED bits, but implies
    107 their functionality.
    108 
    109 Setting of WCONTINUED bit in waitpid flags is not recommended: the
    110 continued state is per-process and consuming it can confuse real parent
    111 of the tracee.
    112 
    113 Use of WNOHANG bit in waitpid flags may cause waitpid return 0 ("no
    114 wait results available yet") even if tracer knows there should be a
    115 notification. Example: kill(tracee, SIGKILL); waitpid(tracee, &status,
    116 __WALL | WNOHANG);
    117 
    118 ??? waitid usage? WNOWAIT?
    119 
    120 ??? describe how wait notifications queue (or not queue)
    121 
    122 The following kinds of ptrace-stops exist: signal-delivery-stops,
    123 group-stop, PTRACE_EVENT stops, syscall-stops [, SINGLESTEP, SYSEMU,
    124 SYSEMU_SINGLESTEP]. They all are reported as waitpid result with
    125 WIFSTOPPED(status) == true. They may be differentiated by checking
    126 (status >> 8) value, and if looking at (status >> 8) value doesn't
    127 resolve ambiguity, by querying PTRACE_GETSIGINFO. (Note:
    128 WSTOPSIG(status) macro returns ((status >> 8) & 0xff) value).
    129 
    130 
    131 	1.x.x Signal-delivery-stop
    132 
    133 When (possibly multi-threaded) process receives any signal except
    134 SIGKILL, kernel selects a thread which handles the signal (if signal is
    135 generated with t[g]kill, thread selection is done by user). If selected
    136 thread is traced, it enters signal-delivery-stop. By this point, signal
    137 is not yet delivered to the process, and can be suppressed by tracer.
    138 If tracer doesn't suppress the signal, it passes signal to tracee in
    139 the next ptrace request. This second step of signal delivery is called
    140 "signal injection" in this document. Note that if signal is blocked,
    141 signal-delivery-stop doesn't happen until signal is unblocked, with the
    142 usual exception that SIGSTOP can't be blocked.
    143 
    144 Signal-delivery-stop is observed by tracer as waitpid returning with
    145 WIFSTOPPED(status) == true, WSTOPSIG(status) == signal. If
    146 WSTOPSIG(status) == SIGTRAP, this may be a different kind of
    147 ptrace-stop - see "Syscall-stops" and "execve" sections below for
    148 details. If WSTOPSIG(status) == stopping signal, this may be a
    149 group-stop - see below.
    150 
    151 
    152 	1.x.x Signal injection and suppression.
    153 
    154 After signal-delivery-stop is observed by tracer, tracer should restart
    155 tracee with
    156 
    157 	ptrace(PTRACE_rest, pid, 0, sig)
    158 
    159 call, where PTRACE_rest is one of the restarting ptrace ops. If sig is
    160 0, then signal is not delivered. Otherwise, signal sig is delivered.
    161 This operation is called "signal injection" in this document, to
    162 distinguish it from signal-delivery-stop.
    163 
    164 Note that sig value may be different from WSTOPSIG(status) value -
    165 tracer can cause a different signal to be injected.
    166 
    167 Note that suppressed signal still causes syscalls to return
    168 prematurely. Kernel should always restart the syscall in this case:
    169 tracer would observe a new syscall-enter-stop for the same syscall,
    170 or, in case of syscalls returning ERESTART_RESTARTBLOCK,
    171 tracer would observe a syscall-enter-stop for restart_syscall(2)
    172 syscall. There may still be bugs in this area which cause some syscalls
    173 to instead return with -EINTR even though no observable signal
    174 was injected to the tracee.
    175 
    176 This is a cause of confusion among ptrace users. One typical scenario
    177 is that tracer observes group-stop, mistakes it for
    178 signal-delivery-stop, restarts tracee with ptrace(PTRACE_rest, pid, 0,
    179 stopsig) with the intention of injecting stopsig, but stopsig gets
    180 ignored and tracee continues to run.
    181 
    182 SIGCONT signal has a side effect of waking up (all threads of)
    183 group-stopped process. This side effect happens before
    184 signal-delivery-stop. Tracer can't suppress this side-effect (it can
    185 only suppress signal injection, which only causes SIGCONT handler to
    186 not be executed in the tracee, if such handler is installed). In fact,
    187 waking up from group-stop may be followed by signal-delivery-stop for
    188 signal(s) *other than* SIGCONT, if they were pending when SIGCONT was
    189 delivered. IOW: SIGCONT may be not the first signal observed by the
    190 tracee after it was sent.
    191 
    192 Stopping signals cause (all threads of) process to enter group-stop.
    193 This side effect happens after signal injection, and therefore can be
    194 suppressed by tracer.
    195 
    196 PTRACE_GETSIGINFO can be used to retrieve siginfo_t structure which
    197 corresponds to delivered signal. PTRACE_SETSIGINFO may be used to
    198 modify it. If PTRACE_SETSIGINFO has been used to alter siginfo_t,
    199 si_signo field and sig parameter in restarting command must match,
    200 otherwise the result is undefined.
    201 
    202 
    203 	1.x.x Group-stop
    204 
    205 When a (possibly multi-threaded) process receives a stopping signal,
    206 all threads stop. If some threads are traced, they enter a group-stop.
    207 Note that stopping signal will first cause signal-delivery-stop (on one
    208 tracee only), and only after it is injected by tracer (or after it was
    209 dispatched to a thread which isn't traced), group-stop will be
    210 initiated on ALL tracees within multi-threaded process. As usual, every
    211 tracee reports its group-stop separately to corresponding tracer.
    212 
    213 Group-stop is observed by tracer as waitpid returning with
    214 WIFSTOPPED(status) == true, WSTOPSIG(status) == signal. The same result
    215 is returned by some other classes of ptrace-stops, therefore the
    216 recommended practice is to perform
    217 
    218 	ptrace(PTRACE_GETSIGINFO, pid, 0, &siginfo)
    219 
    220 call. The call can be avoided if signal number is not SIGSTOP, SIGTSTP,
    221 SIGTTIN or SIGTTOU - only these four signals are stopping signals. If
    222 tracer sees something else, it can't be group-stop. Otherwise, tracer
    223 needs to call PTRACE_GETSIGINFO. If PTRACE_GETSIGINFO fails with
    224 EINVAL, then it is definitely a group-stop. (Other failure codes are
    225 possible, such as ESRCH "no such process" if SIGKILL killed the tracee).
    226 
    227 As of kernel 2.6.38, after tracer sees tracee ptrace-stop and until it
    228 restarts or kills it, tracee will not run, and will not send
    229 notifications (except SIGKILL death) to tracer, even if tracer enters
    230 into another waitpid call.
    231 
    232 Currently, it causes a problem with transparent handling of stopping
    233 signals: if tracer restarts tracee after group-stop, SIGSTOP is
    234 effectively ignored: tracee doesn't remain stopped, it runs. If tracer
    235 doesn't restart tracee before entering into next waitpid, future
    236 SIGCONT will not be reported to the tracer. Which would make SIGCONT to
    237 have no effect.
    238 
    239 
    240 	1.x.x PTRACE_EVENT stops
    241 
    242 If tracer sets TRACE_O_TRACEfoo options, tracee will enter ptrace-stops
    243 called PTRACE_EVENT stops.
    244 
    245 PTRACE_EVENT stops are observed by tracer as waitpid returning with
    246 WIFSTOPPED(status) == true, WSTOPSIG(status) == SIGTRAP. Additional bit
    247 is set in a higher byte of status word: value ((status >> 8) & 0xffff)
    248 will be (SIGTRAP | PTRACE_EVENT_foo << 8). The following events exist:
    249 
    250 PTRACE_EVENT_VFORK - stop before return from vfork/clone+CLONE_VFORK.
    251 When tracee is continued after this, it will wait for child to
    252 exit/exec before continuing its execution (IOW: usual behavior on
    253 vfork).
    254 
    255 PTRACE_EVENT_FORK - stop before return from fork/clone+SIGCHLD
    256 
    257 PTRACE_EVENT_CLONE - stop before return from clone
    258 
    259 PTRACE_EVENT_VFORK_DONE - stop before return from
    260 vfork/clone+CLONE_VFORK, but after vfork child unblocked this tracee by
    261 exiting or exec'ing.
    262 
    263 For all four stops described above: stop occurs in parent, not in newly
    264 created thread. PTRACE_GETEVENTMSG can be used to retrieve new thread's
    265 tid.
    266 
    267 PTRACE_EVENT_EXEC - stop before return from exec.
    268 
    269 PTRACE_EVENT_EXIT - stop before exit (including death from exit_group),
    270 signal death, or exit caused by execve in multi-threaded process.
    271 PTRACE_GETEVENTMSG returns exit status. Registers can be examined
    272 (unlike when "real" exit happens). The tracee is still alive, it needs
    273 to be PTRACE_CONTed or PTRACE_DETACHed to finish exit.
    274 
    275 PTRACE_GETSIGINFO on PTRACE_EVENT stops returns si_signo = SIGTRAP,
    276 si_code = (event << 8) | SIGTRAP.
    277 
    278 
    279 	1.x.x Syscall-stops
    280 
    281 If tracee was restarted by PTRACE_SYSCALL, tracee enters
    282 syscall-enter-stop just prior to entering any syscall. If tracer
    283 restarts it with PTRACE_SYSCALL, tracee enters syscall-exit-stop when
    284 syscall is finished, or if it is interrupted by a signal. (That is,
    285 signal-delivery-stop never happens between syscall-enter-stop and
    286 syscall-exit-stop, it happens *after* syscall-exit-stop).
    287 
    288 Other possibilities are that tracee may stop in a PTRACE_EVENT stop,
    289 exit (if it entered exit or exit_group syscall), be killed by SIGKILL,
    290 or die silently (if execve syscall happened in another thread).
    291 
    292 Syscall-enter-stop and syscall-exit-stop are observed by tracer as
    293 waitpid returning with WIFSTOPPED(status) == true, WSTOPSIG(status) ==
    294 SIGTRAP. If PTRACE_O_TRACESYSGOOD option was set by tracer, then
    295 WSTOPSIG(status) == (SIGTRAP | 0x80).
    296 
    297 Syscall-stops can be distinguished from signal-delivery-stop with
    298 SIGTRAP by querying PTRACE_GETSIGINFO: si_code <= 0 if sent by usual
    299 suspects like [tg]kill/sigqueue/etc; or = SI_KERNEL (0x80) if sent by
    300 kernel, whereas syscall-stops have si_code = SIGTRAP or (SIGTRAP |
    301 0x80). However, syscall-stops happen very often (twice per syscall),
    302 and performing PTRACE_GETSIGINFO for every syscall-stop may be somewhat
    303 expensive.
    304 
    305 Some architectures allow to distinguish them by examining registers.
    306 For example, on x86 rax = -ENOSYS in syscall-enter-stop. Since SIGTRAP
    307 (like any other signal) always happens *after* syscall-exit-stop, and
    308 at this point rax almost never contains -ENOSYS, SIGTRAP looks like
    309 "syscall-stop which is not syscall-enter-stop", IOW: it looks like a
    310 "stray syscall-exit-stop" and can be detected this way. But such
    311 detection is fragile and is best avoided.
    312 
    313 Using PTRACE_O_TRACESYSGOOD option is a recommended method, since it is
    314 reliable and does not incur performance penalty.
    315 
    316 Syscall-enter-stop and syscall-exit-stop are indistinguishable from
    317 each other by tracer. Tracer needs to keep track of the sequence of
    318 ptrace-stops in order to not misinterpret syscall-enter-stop as
    319 syscall-exit-stop or vice versa. The rule is that syscall-enter-stop is
    320 always followed by syscall-exit-stop, PTRACE_EVENT stop or tracee's
    321 death - no other kinds of ptrace-stop can occur in between.
    322 
    323 If after syscall-enter-stop tracer uses restarting command other than
    324 PTRACE_SYSCALL, syscall-exit-stop is not generated.
    325 
    326 PTRACE_GETSIGINFO on syscall-stops returns si_signo = SIGTRAP, si_code
    327 = SIGTRAP or (SIGTRAP | 0x80).
    328 
    329 
    330 	1.x.x SINGLESTEP, SYSEMU, SYSEMU_SINGLESTEP
    331 
    332 ??? document PTRACE_SINGLESTEP, PTRACE_SYSEMU, PTRACE_SYSEMU_SINGLESTEP
    333 
    334 
    335 	1.x Informational and restarting ptrace commands.
    336 
    337 Most ptrace commands (all except ATTACH, TRACEME, KILL) require tracee
    338 to be in ptrace-stop, otherwise they fail with ESRCH.
    339 
    340 When tracee is in ptrace-stop, tracer can read and write data to tracee
    341 using informational commands. They leave tracee in ptrace-stopped state:
    342 
    343 longv = ptrace(PTRACE_PEEKTEXT/PEEKDATA/PEEKUSER, pid, addr, 0);
    344 	ptrace(PTRACE_POKETEXT/POKEDATA/POKEUSER, pid, addr, long_val);
    345 	ptrace(PTRACE_GETREGS/GETFPREGS, pid, 0, &struct);
    346 	ptrace(PTRACE_SETREGS/SETFPREGS, pid, 0, &struct);
    347 	ptrace(PTRACE_GETSIGINFO, pid, 0, &siginfo);
    348 	ptrace(PTRACE_SETSIGINFO, pid, 0, &siginfo);
    349 	ptrace(PTRACE_GETEVENTMSG, pid, 0, &long_var);
    350 	ptrace(PTRACE_SETOPTIONS, pid, 0, PTRACE_O_flags);
    351 
    352 Note that some errors are not reported. For example, setting siginfo
    353 may have no effect in some ptrace-stops, yet the call may succeed
    354 (return 0 and don't set errno).
    355 
    356 ptrace(PTRACE_SETOPTIONS, pid, 0, PTRACE_O_flags) affects one tracee.
    357 Current flags are replaced. Flags are inherited by new tracees created
    358 and "auto-attached" via active PTRACE_O_TRACE[V]FORK or
    359 PTRACE_O_TRACECLONE options.
    360 
    361 Another group of commands makes ptrace-stopped tracee run. They have
    362 the form:
    363 
    364 	ptrace(PTRACE_cmd, pid, 0, sig);
    365 
    366 where cmd is CONT, DETACH, SYSCALL, SINGLESTEP, SYSEMU, or
    367 SYSEMU_SINGLESTEP. If tracee is in signal-delivery-stop, sig is the
    368 signal to be injected. Otherwise, sig may be ignored.
    369 
    370 
    371 	1.x Attaching and detaching
    372 
    373 A thread can be attached to tracer using ptrace(PTRACE_ATTACH, pid, 0,
    374 0) call. This also sends SIGSTOP to this thread. If tracer wants this
    375 SIGSTOP to have no effect, it needs to suppress it. Note that if other
    376 signals are concurrently sent to this thread during attach, tracer may
    377 see tracee enter signal-delivery-stop with other signal(s) first! The
    378 usual practice is to reinject these signals until SIGSTOP is seen, then
    379 suppress SIGSTOP injection. The design bug here is that attach and
    380 concurrent SIGSTOP are racing and SIGSTOP may be lost.
    381 
    382 ??? Describe how to attach to a thread which is already group-stopped.
    383 
    384 Since attaching sends SIGSTOP and tracer usually suppresses it, this
    385 may cause stray EINTR return from the currently executing syscall in
    386 the tracee, as described in "signal injection and suppression" section.
    387 
    388 ptrace(PTRACE_TRACEME, 0, 0, 0) request turns current thread into a
    389 tracee. It continues to run (doesn't enter ptrace-stop). A common
    390 practice is to follow ptrace(PTRACE_TRACEME) with raise(SIGSTOP) and
    391 allow parent (which is our tracer now) to observe our
    392 signal-delivery-stop.
    393 
    394 If PTRACE_O_TRACE[V]FORK or PTRACE_O_TRACECLONE options are in effect,
    395 then children created by (vfork or clone(CLONE_VFORK)), (fork or
    396 clone(SIGCHLD)) and (other kinds of clone) respectively are
    397 automatically attached to the same tracer which traced their parent.
    398 SIGSTOP is delivered to them, causing them to enter
    399 signal-delivery-stop after they exit syscall which created them.
    400 
    401 Detaching of tracee is performed by ptrace(PTRACE_DETACH, pid, 0, sig).
    402 PTRACE_DETACH is a restarting operation, therefore it requires tracee
    403 to be in ptrace-stop. If tracee is in signal-delivery-stop, signal can
    404 be injected. Othervice, sig parameter may be silently ignored.
    405 
    406 If tracee is running when tracer wants to detach it, the usual solution
    407 is to send SIGSTOP (using tgkill, to make sure it goes to the correct
    408 thread), wait for tracee to stop in signal-delivery-stop for SIGSTOP
    409 and then detach it (suppressing SIGSTOP injection). Design bug is that
    410 this can race with concurrent SIGSTOPs. Another complication is that
    411 tracee may enter other ptrace-stops and needs to be restarted and
    412 waited for again, until SIGSTOP is seen. Yet another complication is to
    413 be sure that tracee is not already ptrace-stopped, because no signal
    414 delivery happens while it is - not even SIGSTOP.
    415 
    416 ??? Describe how to detach from a group-stopped tracee so that it
    417     doesn't run, but continues to wait for SIGCONT.
    418 
    419 If tracer dies, all tracees are automatically detached and restarted,
    420 unless they were in group-stop. Handling of restart from group-stop is
    421 currently buggy, but "as planned" behavior is to leave tracee stopped
    422 and waiting for SIGCONT. If tracee is restarted from
    423 signal-delivery-stop, pending signal is injected.
    424 
    425 
    426 	1.x execve under ptrace.
    427 
    428 During execve, kernel destroys all other threads in the process, and
    429 resets execve'ing thread tid to tgid (process id). This looks very
    430 confusing to tracers:
    431 
    432 All other threads stop in PTRACE_EXIT stop, if requested by active
    433 ptrace option. Then all other threads except thread group leader report
    434 death as if they exited via exit syscall with exit code 0. Then
    435 PTRACE_EVENT_EXEC stop happens, if requested by active ptrace option
    436 (on which tracee - leader? execve-ing one?).
    437 
    438 The execve-ing tracee changes its pid while it is in execve syscall.
    439 (Remember, under ptrace 'pid' returned from waitpid, or fed into ptrace
    440 calls, is tracee's tid). That is, pid is reset to process id, which
    441 coincides with thread group leader tid.
    442 
    443 If thread group leader has reported its death by this time, for tracer
    444 this looks like dead thread leader "reappears from nowhere". If thread
    445 group leader was still alive, for tracer this may look as if thread
    446 group leader returns from a different syscall than it entered, or even
    447 "returned from syscall even though it was not in any syscall". If
    448 thread group leader was not traced (or was traced by a different
    449 tracer), during execve it will appear as if it has become a tracee of
    450 the tracer of execve'ing tracee. All these effects are the artifacts of
    451 pid change.
    452 
    453 PTRACE_O_TRACEEXEC option is the recommended tool for dealing with this
    454 case. It enables PTRACE_EVENT_EXEC stop which occurs before execve
    455 syscall return.
    456 
    457 Pid change happens before PTRACE_EVENT_EXEC stop, not after.
    458 
    459 When tracer receives PTRACE_EVENT_EXEC stop notification, it is
    460 guaranteed that except this tracee and thread group leader, no other
    461 threads from the process are alive.
    462 
    463 On receiving this notification, tracer should clean up all its internal
    464 data structures about all threads of this process, and retain only one
    465 data structure, one which describes single still running tracee, with
    466 pid = tgid = process id.
    467 
    468 Currently, there is no way to retrieve former pid of execve-ing tracee.
    469 If tracer doesn't keep track of its tracees' thread group relations, it
    470 may be unable to know which tracee  execve-ed and therefore no longer
    471 exists under old pid due to pid change.
    472 
    473 Example: two threads execve at the same time:
    474 
    475   ** we get syscall-entry-stop in thread 1: **
    476  PID1 execve("/bin/foo", "foo" <unfinished ...>
    477   ** we issue PTRACE_SYSCALL for thread 1 **
    478   ** we get syscall-entry-stop in thread 2: **
    479  PID2 execve("/bin/bar", "bar" <unfinished ...>
    480   ** we issue PTRACE_SYSCALL for thread 2 **
    481   ** we get PTRACE_EVENT_EXEC for PID0, we issue PTRACE_SYSCALL **
    482   ** we get syscall-exit-stop for PID0: **
    483  PID0 <... execve resumed> )             = 0
    484 
    485 In this situation there is no way to know which execve succeeded.
    486 
    487 If PTRACE_O_TRACEEXEC option is NOT in effect for the execve'ing
    488 tracee, kernel delivers an extra SIGTRAP to tracee after execve syscall
    489 returns. This is an ordinary signal (similar to one which can be
    490 generated by "kill -TRAP"), not a special kind of ptrace-stop.
    491 GETSIGINFO on it has si_code = 0 (SI_USER). It can be blocked by signal
    492 mask, and thus can happen (much) later.
    493 
    494 Usually, tracer (for example, strace) would not want to show this extra
    495 post-execve SIGTRAP signal to the user, and would suppress its delivery
    496 to the tracee (if SIGTRAP is set to SIG_DFL, it is a killing signal).
    497 However, determining *which* SIGTRAP to suppress is not easy. Setting
    498 PTRACE_O_TRACEEXEC option and thus suppressing this extra SIGTRAP is
    499 the recommended approach.
    500 
    501 
    502 	1.x Real parent
    503 
    504 Ptrace API (ab)uses standard Unix parent/child signaling over waitpid.
    505 This used to cause real parent of the process to stop receiving several
    506 kinds of waitpid notifications when child process is traced by some
    507 other process.
    508 
    509 Many of these bugs have been fixed, but as of 2.6.38 several still
    510 exist.
    511 
    512 As of 2.6.38, the following is believed to work correctly:
    513 
    514 - exit/death by signal is reported first to tracer, then, when tracer
    515 consumes waitpid result, to real parent (to real parent only when the
    516 whole multi-threaded process exits). If they are the same process, the
    517 report is sent only once.
    518 
    519 
    520 	1.x Known bugs
    521 
    522 Following bugs still exist:
    523 
    524 Group-stop notifications are sent to tracer, but not to real parent.
    525 Last confirmed on 2.6.38.6.
    526 
    527 If thread group leader is traced and exits by calling exit syscall,
    528 PTRACE_EVENT_EXIT stop will happen for it (if requested), but subsequent
    529 WIFEXITED notification will not be delivered until all other threads
    530 exit. As explained above, if one of other threads execve's, thread
    531 group leader death will *never* be reported. If execve-ed thread is not
    532 traced by this tracer, tracer will never know that execve happened.
    533 
    534 ??? need to test this scenario
    535 
    536 One possible workaround is to detach thread group leader instead of
    537 restarting it in this case. Last confirmed on 2.6.38.6.
    538 
    539 SIGKILL signal may still cause PTRACE_EVENT_EXIT stop before actual
    540 signal death. This may be changed in the future - SIGKILL is meant to
    541 always immediately kill tasks even under ptrace. Last confirmed on
    542 2.6.38.6.
    543

README-mpers

      1 To use mpers functionality, one should:
      2 * typedef all of the target types which are compound and not typedefed
      3 already;
      4 * for each target type, include DEF_MPERS_TYPE(target_type_t), these can
      5 be included conditionally;
      6 * include MPERS_DEFS once;
      7 * before inclusion of MPERS_DEFS include all important headers
      8 (containing definitions of these types or other behaviour-affecting
      9 defines);
     10 * printers should be defined
     11 as MPERS_PRINTER_DECL(return_type, function_name)(args),
     12 inside files that include MPERS_DEFS these printers should be called
     13 as MPERS_FUNC_NAME(function_name)(args), in other files
     14 they should be called just as function_name(args).
     15