NAME

socketwatch - run a command under a watchdog for network activity

SYNOPSIS

socketwatch [options] <command> [arguments ...]

DESCRIPTION

socketwatch runs a given command and monitors its network activity, via an LD_PRELOAD library. If the command does not send or receive network data for a length of time greater than the timeout value, socketwatch kills the command.

socketwatch exits when the command it started exits. If socketwatch killed the command, socketwatch exits with an error. Otherwise, socketwatch exits with the command's exit status.

The argument "--" disables argument parsing for all proceeding arguments; e.g. "socketwatch ls -l" will pass "-l" to socketwatch and run "ls", whereas "socketwatch -- ls -l" will run "ls -l".

OPTIONS

-t, --timeout

Set the network activity timeout.

-V, --version

Display version information.

-?, --help

Display a summary of command-line options.

LIMITATIONS

• socketwatch detects network activity only for file descriptors created within the command process and through socket(2).
• socketwatch detects network activity from only a limited subset of system calls: read(2) and write(2).
• socketwatch monitors only dynamically-linked system calls.
• socketwatch does not allow the command to fork or create threads.

SEE ALSO

socketwatch is part of mswatch(1); mswatch website: http://mswatch.sf.net/

AUTHOR

Written by Chris Frost <chris@frostnet.net>.