How can a process intercept stdout and stderr of another process on Linux?

Question

I have some scripts that ought to have stopped running but hang around forever. Is there some way I can figure out what they\'re writing to STDOUT and STDERR in a readable

Answer 1

strace outputs a lot less with just -ewrite (and not the =1 suffix). And it's a bit simpler than the GDB method, IMO.

I used it to see the progress of an existing MythTV encoding job (sudo because I don't own the encoding process):

$ ps -aef | grep -i handbrake
mythtv   25089 25085 99 16:01 ?        00:53:43 /usr/bin/HandBrakeCLI -i /var/lib/mythtv/recordings/1061_20111230122900.mpg -o /var/lib/mythtv/recordings/1061_20111230122900.mp4 -e x264 -b 1500 -E faac -B 256 -R 48 -w 720
jward    25293 20229  0 16:30 pts/1    00:00:00 grep --color=auto -i handbr

$ sudo strace -ewrite -p 25089
Process 25089 attached - interrupt to quit
write(1, "\rEncoding: task 1 of 1, 70.75 % "..., 73) = 73
write(1, "\rEncoding: task 1 of 1, 70.76 % "..., 73) = 73
write(1, "\rEncoding: task 1 of 1, 70.77 % "..., 73) = 73
write(1, "\rEncoding: task 1 of 1, 70.78 % "..., 73) = 73^C