I'm new to Erlang, but I was wondering if it's possible to somehow attach to a working application and examine a ETS or DETS it's using. If yes, would you care to give a small example?

Thank you!

There are two ways of doing that, both of which may or may not work depending on how the Erlang node was started:

• using to_erl
• opening a remote shell (erl -remsh) over Erlang distribution

Either way, you end up with an Erlang shell where you can inspect your tables.

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run_erl and to_erl

If the Erlang node was started with the run_erl wrapper, then you can connect to the running node with to_erl. You can see the run_erl command used by running:

ps -C run_erl -fww

For example, if the Erlang node was started with this command:

run_erl -daemon /my/erlang/node/tmp/ /my/erlang/node/log/ /my/erlang/node/start

then the three paths in the command correspond to:

1. The directory where the named pipes are kept
2. The directory where the standard output is logged
3. The command for actually starting the Erlang node

You want the first one for to_erl, so the command would be:

to_erl /my/erlang/node/tmp/

Note the trailing slash! to_erl gets confused if it is missing.

To exit, type Ctrl-D.

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Connect using Erlang distribution

If the Erlang node is running as a distributed node, and you know the secret "cookie", you can start another node and open a remote shell.

Which node name? Long or short?

You need to know the node name of the running node, and also whether it's running with "long" or "short" node names.

In a "long" node name, the host part is a fully qualified domain name or an IP address, but in a "short" node name, the host part is just a host name, without dots. If the Erlang node was started with the -name option, it's using long node names, and if it was started with the -sname option, it's using short node names. If neither option was used, it's not a distributed node and it's not possible to connect to it.¹

And the host name might be explicit or implicit in the command. If the command looks like one of these, you already know the exact node name:

erl -name myerlangnode@mymachine.example.com
erl -sname myerlangnode@mymachine

But if the -name or -sname option only specifies the "bare" node name, you'll need to figure out what host name it chose to start with:

erl -name myerlangnode    # node name is actually myerlangnode@mymachine.example.com
erl -sname myerlangnode   # node name is actually myerlangnode@mymachine

What is the cookie?

When one Erlang node connects to another, both nodes need to have the same "cookie" configured, otherwise the handshake will fail. The cookie can either be read from the file .erlang.cookie in the home directory of the user that the Erlang node is running as, or set explicitly with the -setcookie command when starting the node.

Let's connect!

So now we know:

• the exact node name used by the running node
• whether the node was started with -name or -sname (i.e. long or short node name)
• whether the cookie was read from the user's home directory or set with -setcookie

Now we can connect! We need to start a temporary Erlang node that:

• uses -name or -sname, according to what the running node was started with
• uses a unique node name
• either uses the same -setcookie option as the running node, or runs as the same user to access the same .erlang.cookie file
• uses -remsh ("remote shell") to connect to the running node.
• uses -hidden to avoid being seen as part of the Erlang cluster

So something like this:

erl -hidden -name mytmpnode -setcookie secret -remsh myerlangnode@mymachine.example.com
erl -hidden -sname mytmpnode -setcookie secret -remsh myerlangnode@mymachine

This should open a shell on the running node. You can tell by looking at the prompt, which should tell you the node name:

(myerlangnode@mymachine)1>

If it doesn't show the right node name, see the question Erlang remote shell not working.

To exit, type Ctrl-g and then q.

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Examine ETS or DETS tables

Once you have an Erlang shell, you can inspect the tables. Use ets:all() or dets:all() to list the existing tables. For ETS, you can then use ets:tab2list, which shows all entries in a table:

ets:tab2list(my_table).

For DETS, you can use dets:match_object with the '_' wildcard pattern:

dets:match_object(my_table, '_').

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^{1 Except if the node was started as a non-distributed node and later turned into a distributed node with net_kernel:start.}