Obligatory mention for those who don’t know yet : you can find what files a program use by using
strace <command>(provided strace is installed). It actually logs all syscalls made by the program, so there will be a lot of noise, but in there you will find theaccess()andopen()calls.Additionally, if you want to strace programs that already are running in a convenient interface,
htophas strace support (this is less useful to find configuration files, as those are usually read at the start of the program, but if you can trigger a save to the file, it will appear here).Wow! I did not know about htop’s built in support. That’s awesome to know about, thanks!
Yeah, it’s easy to miss. :) I think it’s been there for something like about 5 years? (don’t quote me on that). But it only appears if strace is available, and even then it’s a bit hidden in the interface. I discovered it the way I learn new features in vim : by mistyping.
Never found an app with configuration file that didn’t have that info at the man page …
It’s often not up to the app. It can be up to the packager, the distro, or the user if they change the XDG config directory.
