topic Re: Remotely view another users terminal session in Operating System - Linux

Remotely view another users terminal session

Richard Horton — Wed, 13 Jun 2001 16:47:48 GMT

I have a small linux box I have introduced to our phone support group. . Each user does a seminal telnet session with the bash shell and type basic commands to practice/test commands for unix/linux. Once in a while they encounter an error at the command line.

As an administrator of several systems, I would like to be able to log into the main console of the unix server (command line bash shell) and be able to cat or double redirect there tcp/ip telnet session so that I can view there screen as they type and present the error exactly as they see it.

Could somone give me suggestions. I have seen this done once before on a Unix platform just using some simple double redirects and the psudeo tty file representing the remote telnet session the admin wanted to view.

Any help would be appreciated.

Re: Remotely view another users terminal session

Alexander M. Ermes — Fri, 15 Jun 2001 04:39:50 GMT

Hi there.
please check the shell command, that will be started, if the user logs on. You can setup a history file with the shell or an environment variable.
Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

Re: Remotely view another users terminal session

Vincent Stedema — Fri, 15 Jun 2001 09:37:30 GMT

Hi,

Take a look at the man pages for kibitz and/or xkibitz. I'm not sure if this is what your looking for, though...

HTH.

Regards,

Vincent

Re: Remotely view another users terminal session

Richard Horton — Tue, 19 Jun 2001 16:07:56 GMT

I am probably not communicating what I am trying to achieve correctly. There is an old software program called PEEK for Unix systems. It allows an administrator to view any telnet connection to his server. He actively displays what the user see's at his specific terminal,network, psuedo tty connection. However, I have seen this same feature by someone using double redirects. This is what I would like to accomplish.

Any ideas?

Re: Remotely view another users terminal session

Rumen Ginev — Tue, 26 Jun 2001 07:24:45 GMT

Hi,

Richard take a look at this:
http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/PLD//PLD-1.0/i686/PLD/RPMS//ttysnoop-0.12c-8.i686.html

It runs fine under Linux. I compiled it for HP-UX too. There are some bugs, but it is usable.

HTH,
Rumen

Re: Remotely view another users terminal session

Magdi KAMAL — Wed, 27 Jun 2001 12:31:57 GMT

Hi Richerd,

I test the following and it's working :

1. You had to change the permissions on the caracter device dealing with your telnet session in order to allow the active user to write to /dev/pts/p? .

2. Then the active user should run the application like :

# ./myApplication [] [] ? tee /dev/pts/p?

This will allows you to see Input / Output from his screen .

It works .

Magdi

Re: Remotely view another users terminal session

Magdi KAMAL — Wed, 27 Jun 2001 12:34:06 GMT

Hi again,

The permession are 620 on caracter device and must be 622 so that other could write to your device file.

Magdi

Re: Remotely view another users terminal session

Bill McNAMARA_1 — Wed, 27 Jun 2001 14:35:28 GMT

You might want to have a look at xspy which will copy X sessions snapshots too and fro..
for a terminal, you need the sun ttysnoop for linux.

Bill