Task: App Investigation

Enter the labs/lab-02/tasks/app-investigation/support/ folder and go through the practice items below. Select a binary executable application and a scripted application.

  1. Use ldd on the two applications. Notice the resulting messages and explain the results.

  2. Use ltrace and strace on the two applications. Follow the library calls and the system calls done by each application.

  3. Check to see whether there are statically-linked application executables in the system. The file command tells if the file passed as argument is a statically-linked executable. If you can’t find one, install the busybox-static package.

  4. Look into what busybox is and explain why it’s custom to have it as statically-linked executable.

  5. Run ldd, nm, strace, ltrace on a statically-linked application executable. Explain the results.

If you’re having difficulties solving this exercise, go through this reading material.