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All programs should tell you where they store config files (utcc.utoronto.ca)
submitted 3 years ago by 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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[–] 40 points 3 years ago (7 children)

Start your application / program with “strace” and see all the files it opens.

Also run “lsof” on a running process to see what files it has open.

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  • [–] [B] 14 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (2 children)

    Or use inotifywait from inotify-tools. It logs acces to specified file/folder.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Interesting. I have not heard of this tools. But you say specified file or folder, that means you already know the file location?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    You can call it recursively on .config (for instance), and watch for specific events (creation, deletion, modification, etc). But I expect this to be expensive on really large folders and I'd avoid it if I could.

    Btw it's syscalls iirc (inotify-tools just exposes them)

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    I doubt that's a linux problem. All apps store config in /etc, ~/.*rc or ~/.config

    Everything else should be considered a bug (looking at you, systemd!)

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