User Guide¶
Installation¶
Please, see how to Get Tracer.
Standard usage¶
Standard way to use tracer is just running the sudo tracer
command. I am working on user-only mode, but in this moment it runs only with root permissions (It needs access to your package manager’s history). There you can see the output:
$[FrostyX ~]-> sudo tracer
You should restart:
* Some applications using:
sudo service apache2 restart
sudo service mpd restart
* These applications manually:
chromium
dolphin
gvim
Additionally, there are:
- 6 processes requiring restarting your session (i.e. Logging out & Logging in again)
- 2 processes requiring reboot
As you can see, It hides few kinds of applications to not bothering you with such that you can’t control. But of course, if you want, you can see them all, use the -a
or --all
parameter.
Helpers¶
You got list of applications, but what next. There is -s
or --show
parameter for showing some handy informations. It displays package owning this application, what user started it and when, its PID and recommended way, how to restart it. When you want to print helpers for all affected applications, you can use --helpers
parameter.
$[FrostyX ~]-> tracer -s apache2
* apache2
Package: www-servers/apache
Description: The Apache Web Server.
Type: Daemon
State: apache2 has been started by root 34 minutes ago. PID - 18816
How to restart:
service apache2 restart
Helpers for custom applications can be defined in /etc/tracer/applications.xml
& ~/.config/tracer/applications.xml
. If you have any objections to the described way how to restart it, please create an issue.
Interactive mode¶
Printing helper for specific application is handy but not for every situation. For instance it can be little awkward to call tracer -s app_name
a lot of specific applications. That would be lot of boring and senseless typing so I am introducing interactive mode to you.
When you use -i
or --interactive
, tracer will print number next to every application. Then you will be asked for input. That is simple way how to iterate through helpers for all applications.
$[FrostyX ~]-> sudo tracer -i
[1] gvim
[2] mpd
[3] dolphin
[4] apache2
Press application number for help or 'q' to quit
--> 2
* mpd
Package: media-sound/mpd
Description: The Music Player Daemon (mpd)
Type: Daemon
State: mpd has been started by frostyx 23 hours ago. PID - 3751
How to restart:
service mpd restart
-- Press enter to get list of applications --
Verbose¶
Like most of UNIX programs, even tracer has verbose
mode. It provides three levels of chattiness.
Non-verbose mode
$[FrostyX ~]-> sudo tracer -s gvim
* gvim
Package: app-editors/gvim
Description: GUI version of the Vim text editor
Type: Application
State: gvim has been started by frostyx 2 hours ago. PID - 8431
How to restart:
Sorry, It's not known
First verbose level
$[FrostyX ~]-> sudo tracer -s gvim -v
* gvim
Package: app-editors/gvim
Description: GUI version of the Vim text editor
Type: Application
State: gvim has been started by frostyx 2 hours ago. PID - 8431
Affected by:
gnome-base/gvfs
x11-libs/libX11
How to restart:
Sorry, It's not known
Second verbose level
$[FrostyX ~]-> sudo tracer -s gvim -vv
* gvim
Package: app-editors/gvim
Description: GUI version of the Vim text editor
Type: Application
State: gvim has been started by frostyx 2 hours ago. PID - 8431
Affected by:
gnome-base/gvfs
/usr/lib/gvfs/libgvfscommon.so
/usr/lib/gio/modules/libgioremote-volume-monitor.so
/usr/lib/gio/modules/libgvfsdbus.so
x11-libs/libX11
/usr/lib/libX11.so
/usr/lib/libX11-xcb.so
How to restart:
Sorry, It's not known
Distro-specific candy¶
Fedora - DNF plugin¶
There is plugin for new fedora package manager - DNF. It calls tracer after every successful transaction. Please note that it checks only packages in actual transaction, so if you run tracer
from command line, you can actually get longer list.
If you want this feature, install the plugin package. Please notice that there are two of them. For F21 and higher install the dnf-plugins-extras-tracer
. If you are still using F20, please install dnf-plugin-tracer
, but be aware that this package is obsoleted and will be no new versions of it.
$[FrostyX ~]-> sudo dnf update vim-X11
...
Running transaction
Upgrading : vim-common-2:7.4.179-1.fc20.i686 1/6
Upgrading : vim-X11-2:7.4.179-1.fc20.i686 2/6
Upgrading : vim-enhanced-2:7.4.179-1.fc20.i686 3/6
...
Upgraded:
vim-X11.i686 2:7.4.179-1.fc20 vim-common.i686 2:7.4.179-1.fc20
vim-enhanced.i686 2:7.4.179-1.fc20
You should restart:
gvim
Done!
If you can’t see tracer section in your output, make sure that in your /etc/dnf/dnf.conf
is not plugins=0
or specified pluginpath to different than default directory.
Error occured¶
Some weird error occured! What should I do? Please keep calm and read it. There should be information what can be wrong and how you can deal with it. For instance
frostyx@kubuntu:~$ sudo tracer
You are running unsupported linux distribution
Please visit https://github.com/FrostyX/tracer/issues
and create new issue called 'Unknown or unsupported linux distribution: Ubuntu' if there isn't such.
Don't you have an GitHub account? Please report this issue on frostyx@email.cz
There is little possibility that you can encounter different type of error. Something like this
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/bin/tracer", line 169, in <module>
main()
File "/usr/local/bin/tracer", line 56, in main
if args.interactive: _print_all_interactive(processes)
File "/usr/local/bin/tracer", line 88, in _print_all_interactive
answer = raw_input("--> ")
It is python traceback. My apologies, you shouldn’t see it. The best thing you can do, is openning new issue in tracer’s issue tracker. Please describe how can I reproduce this issue or what did you do when error occured. Please post complete error message too.