strace

In this article we present a practical use of strace. shred is a tool used to securely delete files by overwriting them with random data several times. The theory is that when erasing files normally a ghost of the data is left behind. Overwriting the file several times is supposed to clear this ghost, and render the file unrecoverable. Of course today we have logging filesystems, SSDs and backup systems that all may retain data of the file, so shred is not that useful. [Read More]

strace is a utility available on Linux that allows you to display all of the calls between a userspace program and the kernel, called system calls. System calls are used by userspace applications when they need to do something that requires the kernel. This covers pretty much and data entering or leaving the application, requests for more memory, libraries getting loaded, and more. strace is similar to other utilities from other systems such as ktrace on BSD/OSX and truss on Solaris/FreeBSD. [Read More]