strace and network protocols

[Richard Kettlewell]

Just a thought, but...

Occasionally strace output includes encoded DNS packets and so on.  As
part of the debugging of a program it can be useful to know what DNS
queries it is making and what answers it is receiving; currently the
only sensible ways to do this (i.e. examing BIND debug output, or
tcpdump'ing the relevant DNS traffic) require more privilege than the
user may have.

(Manually decoding the DNS packet isn't "sensible".)

So, a useful feature for strace might be to be able to mark certain
FDs for decoding according to a chosen protocol, and have
human-readable packet contents appear in the strace output.

DNS need not be the only protocol so supported, but it would be the
first one I'd find useful.  Plain-text protocols such as SMTP don't
need any special support, of course.

Any thoughts?  If I were to take the time to implement this feature,
would it be likely to be included?

ttfn/rjk