Running ltrace isn't trivial. This RHEL 5.3 system has based on a Tomcat Catalina (servlet container) which uses text scripts to tie everything together. When I tried to find an executable here's the rabbit hole I went down:

/etc/init.d/pki-ca9 calls dtomcat5-pki-ca9

]# Path to the tomcat launch script (direct don't use wrapper)
TOMCAT_SCRIPT=/usr/bin/dtomcat5-pki-ca9

/usr/bin/dtomcat5-pki-ca9 calls a watchdog program

/usr/bin/nuxwdog -f $FNAME

I replaced nuxwdog with a wrapper

[root@qantas]# cat /usr/bin/nuxwdog
#!/bin/bash
ltrace -e open -o /tmp/ltrace.$(date +%s) /usr/bin/nuxwdog.bak $@

[root@qantas]# service pki-ca9 start
Starting pki-ca9:              [  OK  ]

[root@qantas]# cat /tmp/ltrace.1295036985
+++ exited (status 1) +++

This is ugly. How do I run strace or ltrace in tomcat?