Re: Inconsistent execve SIGTRAP-ing after ptraced child's PTRACE_TRACEME.

[Chuck Ebbert]

On 08/07/2007 06:43 PM, Eelis van der Weegen wrote:
> How can a parent process intercepting a ptraced child's system calls using
> PTRACE_SYSCALL know which SIGTRAP's are system call entries and which are system
> call exits?
> 
> Since there does not seem to be a way for the parent to get this information
> from the system, ptrace examples floating around on the web generally use a
> boolean in_syscall flag that they toggle at each SIGTRAP. This mechanism seems
> perfectly adequate, but for it to work correctly the flag must obviously be
> appropriately initialized, and that is where things get vague.
> 
> Let's assume that the child's ptrace-ing begins after it first does
> PTRACE_TRACEME and then calls execve. According to the ptrace man page, after
> doing PTRACE_TRACEME "all subsequent calls to exec() by this process will cause
> a SIGTRAP to be sent to it, giving the parent a chance to gain control before
> the new program begins execution". The problem is that this does not specify
> whether the parent will see SIGTRAP's for both entry to and exit from execve, or
> only for exit from it. To my great surprise, I observed both behaviors on actual
> machines (in particular, I observed the former on an x86_64 dual core machine).
> 
> This inconsistency foils the in_syscall flag approach, as there is no way to
> know whether the parent should initialize that flag to true or false (since
> apparently both can occur). Hence, my question is: is this behavior intentional?
> Should there not be a guarantee that /either/ only the execve exit, /or/ both
> entry and exit, are SIGTRAPed?
> 

Did you try PTRACE_SETOPTIONS and set PTRACE_O_TRACEEXEC?
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