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All programs should tell you where they store config files (utcc.utoronto.ca)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I wholeheartedly agree with this blog post. I believe someone on here yesterday was asking about config file locations and setting them manually. This is in the same vein. I can't tell you how many times a command line method for discovering the location of a config file would have saved me 30 minutes of googling.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The *nix equivalent is the lsof command. This doesn't help you finding out in which hierarchy config files are parsed when the program accesses multiple ones, which is often the case.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

You can use something like strace -eopen -f -o strace.out the_program to find all files that the program tried or succeeded to open. Then you can try to find the config file(s) in strace.out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I was digging through the comments for exactly this, thanks!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

There's also a nice version in perftools that can be given a PID. https://github.com/brendangregg/perf-tools/blob/master/opensnoop

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You still don't know which location is preffered and how get they get merged. In my experience, digging into the source is the most straighforward. But my usual problem is more that the config option doesn't do at all what the documentation says it does.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Wouldn't the strace.out file be in chronological order?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yes, though if two different files allow for the same config key - you're stuck opening both to check

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

And you still couldn't be sure, could be parsed the other way around for historic reasons.
Just reading the source code (if possible ofc) is imho easier than reading.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

True, though I had to use strace method on closed source binaries before (zoom)