tail -f question

[JIM NIU]

Anyone knows how to use "tail -f" to monitor a shell session? Had this situation while back when a support center guy dialed in to my system and he had me do a tail -f against some special file. I can see exactly what he typed in, backspace, etc. Man page mentioned about FIFO but no example. Any feedback will be apprecaited.

Jim

[Rodney Hills]

Possibly you started a "script" session (see man script) and then tail -f typescript can be used to see the output from the session.

-- Rod Hills

[Misa]

This isn't going to be tons of help, but hopefully some.

You can find all your FIFOs (named pipes) with:
find / -type p

But I went through this on an idle system and didn't see anything worthwhile.

I can think of several hints: first, there is an option you can use on an xterm window to save the entire session to a file. I'm not finding it right off the bat, but I know this used to work. But I suspect that wasn't it.

I tried looking at my own tty file (from a different window) and that seemed useless. (Find it with tty command...)

I'm wondering if he had you access the modem port's file (something like /dev/ttyd1p0; your mileage will vary) or possible some special file associated with the diagnostics.

Can you ask him or pull up the call log? ;)

--M????a

[harry d brown jr]

was it .sh_history ??

live free or die
harry

[Pierce Byrne_1]

I suspect as well that when he logged in he ran - script filename
you then where able to tail -f filename which is a log of everything typed. Useful for keeping an eye on 3rd parties dialled in for support.