analogue

#!/bin/bash
# Spawn a process that eats memory by the gigabyte. 
# Useful for testing ulimits and other such nonsense.
if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 <gigabytes>"
    exit 1
fi

gigabytes_to_allocate=$1
bytes_to_allocate=$((gigabytes_to_allocate * 1024 * 1024 * 1024))

analogue

#!/usr/bin/python
# strace an existing process tree. `strace -f` only follows newly spawned
# processes which is not always what you want.
import os
import sys
import subprocess

# /proc/[pid]/task/*  == directory of threads including self
# /proc/[pid]/task/[pid]/children == child processes