Super “strace” perl script to assist with debugging programs that spawn child processes.

# Do we have any input?
if(!$ARGV[0]) {
print "Super strace, will strace a running application and all of its children.\nUsage: $0 \nExample: $0 apache2\n";
exit;
}
# get the data we need!
@pids = `pgrep @ARGV[0]`;
# this is the old method, if pidof doesn't exist uncomment if the above breaks
#@pids = `ps auxwwf | grep apache | awk \'\{ print \$2\}\'`;
# get some variables for the current time! Gotta be iso 8601 YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD (eg 1997-07-16T19:20:30+01:00)
#my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = localtime time;
$date = `date +%FT%H:%M:%S%:z`;
chomp ($date);
#$year += 1900;
#$mon += 1;
#$date = "$year-$mon-$mdayT$hour:$min:$sec";
# the strace command! this can be replaced with any command
$go="strace -f -s 40000 -o /tmp/sstrace-$date";
# the separator
$sep = " -p ";
$i=0;
foreach $pid (@pids) {
chomp ($pid);
$go = $go . $sep . $pid;
$i++;
}
print $go . "\n";
exec $go;