Install lurk System Calls Tracing Tool on Ubuntu 24.04

The lurk is an open-source command line tool developed in Rust programming language, designed as a simpler and more user-friendly alternative to strace. It enables users to trace and log system calls made by processes on Linux systems. This tutorial explains how to install lurk system calls tracing tool on Ubuntu 24.04.

Install lurk

Download tar.gz file from releases page:

wget -qO lurk.tar.gz https://github.com/JakWai01/lurk/releases/latest/download/lurk-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz

Extract the executable from the archive to the /usr/local/bin directory:

sudo tar xf lurk.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin lurk

We can check the version of lurk using the following command:

lurk --version

We can remove the unnecessary tar.gz file:

rm -rf lurk.tar.gz

Testing lurk

To use the lurk command, just place it before the command you wish to trace:

lurk myprog arg1 arg2

Change myprog arg1 arg2 with the actual command. For instance:

lurk echo "Hello world"

This will display the system calls made by the echo command. The output may look like the following:

[1777] execve("", "", "") = 0
[1777] brk(0x0) = 0x55555555E000
[1777] mmap(0x0, 8192, 3, 34, 4294967295, 0) = 0x7FFFF7FBD000
[1777] access("/etc/ld.so.preload", 4) = -2
[1777] openat(4294967196, "/etc/ld.so.cache", 524288) = 3
[1777] fstat(3, 0x7FFFFFFFD400) = 0
...
[1777] close(3) = 0
[1777] fstat(1, 0x7FFFFFFFE080) = 0
[1777] ioctl(1, 21505, 0x7FFFFFFFDFE0) = -25
[1777] write(1, "Hello world\n", 12) = 12
[1777] close(1) = 0
[1777] close(2) = 0
[1777] exit_group(0) = ?

Uninstall lurk

To completely remove lurk, delete the associated file:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/bin/lurk