Hi, The Android mobile device platform uses the Linux kernel, but doesn't use sockets or signals for inter-process communication. It uses a system called Binder (which used to be called OpenBinder[1]). Through a complex system of smoke, mirrors and ioctls this makes certain local procedure calls actually take place in other processes.
The patch at this address[2] adds some support to strace for decoding these ioctls. The patch is, to be honest, rubbish. It is two years old and was based on partial documentation and a lot of guesswork. The output format is verbose due to the sheer amount of information conveyed in these Binder ioctls. I suspect some of the information reported may be invalid, as I wasn't sure about the lifetimes of the memory buffers referred to. Irrespective, it's probably not up to the coding standards required for the main strace codebase. But, for anyone who later wants to add Binder support to strace properly, it would be a good start. I am unlikely to make any progress on the patch in the foreseeable future, hence posting to the list now in case anyone else wants to have a go. Then again, any comments are welcome - if anyone thinks that it would be worthwhile to incorporate it into strace almost as-is, please do give me a critique of the patch and I'll spruce it up. Thanks, Adrian [1] http://www.angryredplanet.com/~hackbod/openbinder/docs/html/index.html [2] http://www.macrobug.com/opensource/strace/mb-strace-4.5.15-patch-2513.diffPS this mail is a resend; the first one bounced. Apologies if anyone gets two copies.
-- Adrian Taylor, Macrobug Ltd. +44 7779 723608 A company registered in England and Wales no 5892155, 352 Mill Road, Cambridge CB1 3NN VAT reg. GB 892 4122 21. http://www.macrobug.com/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Apps built with the Adobe(R) Flex(R) framework and Flex Builder(TM) are powering Web 2.0 with engaging, cross-platform capabilities. Quickly and easily build your RIAs with Flex Builder, the Eclipse(TM)based development software that enables intelligent coding and step-through debugging. Download the free 60 day trial. http://p.sf.net/sfu/www-adobe-com
_______________________________________________ Strace-devel mailing list Strace-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/strace-devel
