this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Technology

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All programs should tell you where they store config files (utcc.utoronto.ca)
submitted 1 year ago by wet_lettuce@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
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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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[–] I_Miss_Daniel@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (13 children)

(Windows) Resource Monitor, disk tab, tick the process, see what files it opens and closes.

Also the usual %programdata% and the two %appdata% find most things.

[–] bionade24@kbin.social 2 points 1 year 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.

[–] elmicha@feddit.de 9 points 1 year 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.

[–] andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun 3 points 1 year ago

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

[–] idealium@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

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

[–] bionade24@kbin.social 2 points 1 year 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.

[–] FermatsLastAccount@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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

[–] Hexorg@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] bionade24@kbin.social 1 points 1 year 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.

[–] Hexorg@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

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

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