[atomicnumber3]

It's not quite strace, ProcMon also does network traffic stuff too. I used it quite a bit when my job was trying to shove proprietary (usually academic, usually engineering-related) software installers into a shape that we could make silently install. ProcMon was one of our first resorts whenever an installer would inevitably mysteriously crash when it ran inside an SCCM-managed installation of windows. Which. Was. OFTEN.

Sorry, it's been over a decade now and I still have nightmares sometimes. But yeah procmon is cool.

[_carbyau_]

I do other sysadmin now but the job of getting whatever random vendor's installer into an SCCM deployable state required tools to see just WTF they were doing.

I recall one .exe installer, unzipping to an MSI, which installed the program files but then ran .bat file to run three separate driver installers for the associated hardware. And I had to get it all working in AppV.

I don't use Procmon much now as my work has changed, but I still consider it a good friend.

I am glad linux has other ways to do it but as a linux noob, I'd try procmon first if I had to.

[ed_elliott_asc]

I was in a similar role about that time, I bet you had fun with msvc and manifests :)