STRACE-LOG-MERGE(1)

💖 strace-log-merge(1) — General Commands Manual 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because this little tool is lowkey the group-chat moderator for your strace logs and it deserves main character energy. ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

strace-log-merge — merge strace -ff -tt output

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

strace-log-merge STRACE_LOG

strace-log-merge --help

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so basically strace-log-merge takes all the log files that a strace -ff -tt[t] command spat out and merges them into one glorious timeline. 💅

It does two things, and honestly? iconic behaviour:

• it prepends the Process ID (PID) to each line 🙈
• it sorts the combined output chronologically by timestamp ⏰

like, it's giving "I put your chaotic multi-process logs in a sensible order." periodt.

✨ OPTIONS ✨

• --help — shows you the program usage and then peaces out. simple. clean. we love.
• STRACE_LOG — this is the file name prefix for the log files that came out of a strace -ff -tt[t] command. the utility will read all files matching the STRACE_LOG.* pattern. yes, all of them. 🫶

👑 EXIT STATUS 👑

• 0 — success! slay. everything worked. 🎉
• Non-zero — something went wrong 😭. this can happen because of a missing argument (in which case usage information gets printed) or because of a failure during the processing of the STRACE_LOG.* files.

🍓 USAGE EXAMPLE 🍓

$ strace -o sleepy -ff -tt -e trace=execve,nanosleep \
        sh -c 'sleep 0.1 & sleep 0.2 & sleep 0.3'
$ strace-log-merge sleepy | fold -w 72 -s
13475 21:13:52.040837 execve("/bin/sh", ["sh", "-c", "sleep 0.1 & sleep
0.2 & sleep 0."...], 0x7ffde54b2450 /* 33 vars */) = 0
13478 21:13:52.044050 execve("/bin/sleep", ["sleep", "0.3"],
0x5631be4f87a8 /* 33 vars */) = 0
13476 21:13:52.044269 execve("/bin/sleep", ["sleep", "0.1"],
0x5631be4f87a8 /* 33 vars */) = 0
13477 21:13:52.044389 execve("/bin/sleep", ["sleep", "0.2"],
0x5631be4f87a8 /* 33 vars */) = 0
13478 21:13:52.046207 nanosleep({tv_sec=0, tv_nsec=300000000}, NULL) = 0
13476 21:13:52.046303 nanosleep({tv_sec=0, tv_nsec=100000000}, NULL) = 0
13477 21:13:52.046318 nanosleep({tv_sec=0, tv_nsec=200000000}, NULL) = 0
13476 21:13:52.146852 +++ exited with 0 +++
13475 21:13:52.146942 --- SIGCHLD {si_signo=SIGCHLD,
si_code=CLD_EXITED, si_pid=13476, si_uid=1000, si_status=0, si_utime=0,
si_stime=0} ---
13477 21:13:52.247782 +++ exited with 0 +++
13475 21:13:52.247885 --- SIGCHLD {si_signo=SIGCHLD,
si_code=CLD_EXITED, si_pid=13477, si_uid=1000, si_status=0, si_utime=0,
si_stime=0} ---
13478 21:13:52.347680 +++ exited with 0 +++
13475 21:13:52.347786 --- SIGCHLD {si_signo=SIGCHLD,
si_code=CLD_EXITED, si_pid=13478, si_uid=1000, si_status=0, si_utime=0,
si_stime=0} ---
13475 21:13:52.348069 +++ exited with 0 +++

like look at that. every line got its PID kiss 💋 and the whole thing is in timestamp order. chef's kiss.

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🌈 NOTES 🌈

heads up bestie, there's a little ✨situation✨ here.

strace-log-merge may fail to correctly sort logs that were generated with -tt and span across midnight. 😭 why? because the standard -tt timestamp lacks date information, and that date info is required for proper sorting. it literally cannot tell which day it is.

the fix? use the -ttt option with strace — that solves this problem, because its timestamp format includes the date. so if your run might cross midnight, -ttt is the move. no cap. 🕛

💀 BUGS 💀

strace-log-merge does not validate the format of the input files. 🙈 it just assumes that every file matching the STRACE_LOG.* glob pattern is a correctly formatted log file from a single strace session. so if you feed it chaos, it will simply trust you. and that's a choice.

🧚 HISTORY 🧚

the initial version of strace-log-merge was written by Denys Vlasenko in 2012. an actual legend. 👑

🙈 REPORTING BUGS 🙈

problems with strace-log-merge should be reported to the strace mailing list at <strace-devel@lists.strace.io>.

🌸 SEE ALSO 🌸

strace(1)

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and that's the whole page, bestie. this one's from strace 7.3, dated 2025-07-02 — so go forth, merge those logs, and remember: don't cross midnight with plain -tt or the vibes will be off. 💜✨