Watching what an app does?

Question

Hello

There's a proprietary application that I need that is packaged within a live ISO based on Ubuntu 9.10, so I'd like to try and transplant it into a Ubuntu 10.04 ISO and add/remove applications and drivers.

I have no idea if it's going to work, but in any case, I need an application that I would launch before running the proprietary app, point it to the main binary of that proprietary application, and expect to see all the locations/files it uses so that I can see what directories and files it expects to find.

Does any Linux application do this?

Thank you.

Answer 1

You'll need 'strace'. But note that if there's a file which is used only in some rare conditions, i.e. not every time you are running the application, you'll not see it accessed.