OS X: Attach to a running process and read its environment variables

Question

Is it possible (and if so, how?) to read a running process's environment variables. To be more specific, I am concerned with environment variables set by the process itself (using setenv() or similar), not the general user session environment variables set when the process is launched.

I figured that DTrace would be the tool for this job, but the only solution I've found online (from this mailing list thread) appears to be specific to Solaris because the script fails to execute on my Mac.

Perhaps Instruments exposes this functionality somehow and I just haven't found it yet?

I have also tried Tasks Explorer, which is a nice little application, and it shows process info including environment variables, but it does not show any environment variables set by the process itself, which is what I'm after.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

I suppose you could try next way:

1. Inject you dylib into running process.
2. To read environment variables from injected dylib.
3. Via IPC (RPC, Shared Memory, etc.) send Environment variable into you application.

By the way, I have a plan to add this type of environment variables exploring into my Tasks Explorer.

Next links will help you with injection:

• https://github.com/comex/inject_and_interpose
• SIMBL/Bundle/dylib injection into Dock.app