Shadowing a telnet session

[Craig A. Sharp]

Hello,

Is there any way to shadow a users telnet session from my terminal. I wish to watch our helpdesk people when they are logged in to make sure they are doing things right.

Thanks,

Craig Sharp

[Patrick Wallek]

There is a piece of software called DOUBLEVISION produced by Tridia software that does what you are looking for.

http://www.tridia.com

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Craig:

"DoubleVision" is one product. See here:

http://www.tridia.com/index2.html

There's even a free download evaluation copy.

...JRF...

[Fred Martin_1]

I thought Double Vision was the best.

Double Vision is also expensive. Every time you upgrade unix, or even change boxes, you'll need to buy it again, unless you are on maintenance with them. The yearly maint fees are expensive so ask about those when you inquire. If you're a small company you may find it too expensive.

Don't want to be the party pooper but we paid for it, paid again to go from UX9 to UX10, then 9 months later tried to stay on UX10 but go from an 9000 E box to a 9000 D box - and guess what, pay again.

[Patrick Paton]

Hi,
Tridia also has an OpenSource product called TridiaVNC which you can use. There are versions for most platforms and it's also free.
Patrick

[Bill Thorsteinson]

AT&T Laboratories Cambridge supply the opensource program VNC which allow monitoring and/or remote access to Windows and X-Window
displays. It may do what you are looking for.
It is available at:
http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/

I have it configured on servers running Windows
2000, HP-UX 10.20, and Linux.

You could also look at ttysnoop which is available
with most Linux distributions.

[Steven Sim Kok Leong]

Hi,

You can create an Expect script to log all screen output (including curses-based screens) in a session shell. For this to work, either the Expect script has to be started in the profile or it has to run as the startup shell.

Hope this helps. Regards.

Steven Sim Kok Leong
Brainbench MVP for Unix Admin
http://www.brainbench.com

[Ty Roberts]

I know this response is a little late, but I was looking in the forums for the answer to this same question. I did not find the answer in this posting but now that I have found it I decided I would share it.. Here is how I am able to shadow a user's telnet session...

In the user's profile put the following..

% csh -i |& tee /tmp/logFileName
or
$ csh -i s>&1 | tee /tmp/logFileName

If you want to watch what they are doing in real time just do a

tail -f /tmp/fileName

Hope this helps you!!