how to see what is a command going to do?
 

Hi guys, long time no see :)


I have a maybe a very strange question, about a command, an unknown command ( googled it and found nothing)

so there is a command in my centos (last) whne I execute it it says please press enter to continue. Problem is I dont know what that command does, this is an voip / asterisk based server. It's partially installed byt a partner company. So the question is, is there a way to see what this command will do without really executing it ?
when i try to find it's location by - whereis it shows me a bash with it.

looks like this :

[root@localhost ~]# pcrack

Press enter to continue


^C

[root@localhost ~]# whereis pcrack
pcrack:





Please help / advise.

I want to know what this command does without executing it completely.
because this is a production server, so I cannot risk it.

thanks in advance.

In first place, if you scare to continue and it won't impact your production service just Ctrl+C and terminate the command from the shell first.
Don't know there is a command call "pcrack" in Centos, if have just check the command have manpage for it.

OR
you can trace this command process using "strace"

Hey,

No command in CentOS I know of pcrack.
Also just tried to run this on one of my Asterisk boxes - no command found.

Sounds like something custom written. As kirukan says strace or try to use locate/find rather than whereis if its a script have a look inside it see what it does.

Ask the partner company?

probably I would try a chroot-ed environment. also try ldd pcrack to check what libs it wants to use. You may also try file pcrack to identify its type.