Remotely view another users terminal session

[Richard Horton]

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.

[Alexander M. Ermes · Accepted solution]

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

[Vincent Stedema]

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

[Richard Horton]

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?

[Rumen Ginev]

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

[Magdi KAMAL]

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

[Magdi KAMAL]

Hi again,

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

Magdi

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

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