Advanced "Screen"ing

[Brazen]

I would like to ssh into a unix server and be able to have another person watch what I'm doing. I'm wondering if there is some way that maybe I could open a Screen session and then have the other person attach to this session as read-only? Or maybe tail some sort of file that would show everything going on in the Screen session?


I've also heard there is some way of saving everything that happens within a Screen session. Anybody know how this is done?

 

[M00T]

I use VNC for such purposes.

 

[drag]

Absolutely.

It's very simple.

Ever heard of a special type of file called a 'named pipe'?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Named_pipe

Well you use a command called 'script' along with a named pipe.
Script is a old command which you can use to record the output of shell sessions to a file. It's great for documentation and making scripts.

For this to work instead of using a regular file you send the output of the script command to a named pipe and have somebody watch it with the cat command. Then you use the -f switch to flush the buffer after each write, otherwise I suppose that the script output may not happen realtime.

mkfifo /tmp/watch
script -f /tmp/watch

then on a different terminal go:
cat /tmp/watch

Then the session will startup and you can start demonstrating.

Also script is good for training people so when they do assignments, or they need help, and such they can record what they did to a file.

 

[M00T]

That's very interesting Drag. I use VNC because I can see what the client/customer is typing and then correct the mistakes for them.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: drag
Absolutely.

It's very simple.

Ever heard of a special type of file called a 'named pipe'?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Named_pipe

Well you use a command called 'script' along with a named pipe.
Script is a old command which you can use to record the output of shell sessions to a file. It's great for documentation and making scripts.

For this to work instead of using a regular file you send the output of the script command to a named pipe and have somebody watch it with the cat command. Then you use the -f switch to flush the buffer after each write, otherwise I suppose that the script output may not happen realtime.

mkfifo /tmp/watch
script -f /tmp/watch

then on a different terminal go:
cat /tmp/watch

Then the session will startup and you can start demonstrating.

Also script is good for training people so when they do assignments, or they need help, and such they can record what they did to a file.

So I wouldn't use screen at all for that then? Cool, I'll give it a try.