List of files accessed by application

Question

I want to install propertiary AMD driver but I would also like to know which files were created/changed by installer. Is there some application which can observe (probably by inotify) which files were changed by run application?

Answer 1

I would use strace to capture exactly what the installer does when it's invoked. Something like this will capture all of its output:

$ strace -s 2000 -m output.log <cmd>

You can then look through the resulting log file, output.log, looking at the open... lines to see which files were touched.

Answer 2

Currently I use following invocation:

strace -e trace=file programname

It will output only invocation of file specific function of programname.