More and more scripts for administrative tasks on Linux OS are written by Python. This post aims to introduce a tool to trace Python statement execution. Python is a dynamic object-oriented programming language which can be used to develop various types of software. It offers strong support for integration with other languages and tools and comes with extensive standard libraries. In Linux distributions, Python is widely used to write administrative tools, such as printer configuration package etc.
Tracing Python statement execution and record all the running codes line by line is very useful to locate the cause of an issue efficiently.
Fortunately, the python package comes with a tool trace.py, which can be used to meet those requirement. The trace.py resides in /user/lib/python2.x directory, where python2.x is the python version (e.g. python2.3 and python2.4 etc..)
# rpm -ql python |grep trace.py /usr/lib/python2.3/trace.py /usr/lib/python2.3/trace.pyc /usr/lib/python2.3/trace.pyo
For example, to trace /usr/sbin/printconf-backend, the command is as follows:
# /usr/lib/python2.x/trace.py --trace /usr/sbin/printconf-backend
It will show all debug information and the python script source code on the console. We can record all the output as follows.
# script /tmp/printerconf.log # /usr/lib/python2.x/trace.py --trace /usr/sbin/printconf-backend # exit #
Then check the /tmp/printerconf.log file.
More Options of Trace.py
Using the option –help shows usage information in detail for trace.py. For example:
$ /usr/lib/python2.3/trace.py --help
Usage: /usr/lib/python2.3/trace.py [OPTIONS] [ARGS]
Meta-options:
--help Display this help then exit.
--version Output version information then exit.
Otherwise, exactly one of the following three options must be given:
-t, --trace Print each line to sys.stdout before it is executed.
-c, --count Count the number of times each line is executed
and write the counts to .cover for each
module executed, in the module's directory.
See also `--coverdir', `--file', `--no-report' below.
-l, --listfuncs Keep track of which functions are executed at least
once and write the results to sys.stdout after the
program exits.
-r, --report Generate a report from a counts file; do not execute
any code. `--file' must specify the results file to
read, which must have been created in a previous run
with `--count --file=FILE'.
Modifiers:
-f, --file= File to accumulate counts over several runs.
-R, --no-report Do not generate the coverage report files.
Useful if you want to accumulate over several runs.
-C, --coverdir= Directory where the report files. The coverage
report for . is written to file
//.cover.
-m, --missing Annotate executable lines that were not executed
with '>>>>>> '.
-s, --summary Write a brief summary on stdout for each file.
(Can only be used with --count or --report.)
Filters, may be repeated multiple times:
--ignore-module= Ignore the given module and its submodules
(if it is a package).
--ignore-dir= Ignore files in the given directory (multiple
directories can be joined by os.pathsep).