SUBTERFUGUE

Latest Version: 0.2.1 ("phantom")

SUBTERFUGUE is a framework for observing and playing with the reality of software; it's a foundation for building tools to do tracing, sandboxing, and many other things. You could think of it as "strace meets expect."

[2002-04-06] Update:
Regrettably, the SUBTERFUGUE project has been nearly dormant for over a year now, with just minimal updates to catch up to Python 2.1 and fix a few bugs.
It's become clear that I'm not going to have the time needed to properly maintain it and do the new development needed to turn it from an interesting (IMO) prototype to a reliable tool. Therefore, I'm writing this to announce that I'm looking for one or more people to take it over. If you're interested, or think you might be, please subscribe to subterfugue-dev and post a message indicating your interest (and maybe a bit about your skills and/or where you'd like to see SUBTERFUGUE go).
I will gladly offer information, advice and a roadmap of what I believe are the most important things that need to be fixed or implemented, but the future direction of SUBTERFUGUE will be up to you who take it over.
(If you're wondering, I've taken a job as a scientific programmer at a biomedical research facility, and learning bioinformatics and biology in general is taking up all of my time.)

--Mike

Features

simple interface for writing tools
can follow, rewrite, and annul system calls
can follow, rewrite, and annul signals (with limits)
follows whole process (and thread) trees
can follow across fork, vfork, and clone
has a fairly good wait4 emulation
can follow job control (with limits)

Documentation

a description with more detail on SUBTERFUGUE's many features and limitations
the motivation behind SUBTERFUGUE
some screenshots, giving concrete examples of what you can do with SUBTERFUGUE
a tutorial, which walks through the steps of using and writing new tricks for SUBTERFUGUE
a FAQ list

Trying it out

SUBTERFUGUE runs under Linux 2.4. It's implemented in Python, including a few Python extension modules written in C. Python 1.5.2 or later is required.

You can download the latest version of SUBTERFUGUE from the SUBTERFUGUE project page at SourceForge. A debian package is now available, too.

Mailing Lists

subterfugue-announce - new release and other important announcements
subterfugue-dev - developer traffic
subterfugue-cvs-commits - voluminous cvs commit logs

Please send bug reports, comments and patches to subterfugue-dev.

License

SUBTERFUGUE is free software, and may be redistributed and used under the terms of the GNU Public License.

Thanks to SourceForge for providing their über-cool hosting environment.

Copyright 2000, 2001 Mike Coleman. This page has been visited 60,000+ times.
So, so you think you can tell, heaven from hell, blue skies from pain. Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil, Do you think you can tell? --Pink Floyd, "Wish you were here"