Attach to a processes output for viewing

I think I have a simpler solution here. Just look for a directory whose name corresponds to the PID you are looking for, under the pseudo-filesystem accessible under the /proc path. So if you have a program running, whose ID is 1199, cd into it:

$ cd /proc/1199

Then look for the fd directory underneath

$ cd fd

This fd directory hold the file-descriptors objects that your program is using (0: stdin, 1: stdout, 2: stderr) and just tail -f the one you need - in this case, stdout):

$ tail -f 1

I was looking for this exact same thing and found that you can do:

strace -ewrite -p $PID

It's not exactly what you needed, but it's quite close.

I tried the redirecting output, but that didn't work for me. Maybe because the process was writing to a socket, I don't know.

For me, this worked:

1. Login as the owner of the process (even root is denied permission)

   ~$ su - process_owner
   

2. Tail the file descriptor as mentioned in many other answers.

   ~$ tail -f /proc/<process-id>/fd/1 # (0: stdin, 1: stdout, 2: stderr)
   

There are a few options here. One is to redirect the output of the command to a file, and then use 'tail' to view new lines that are added to that file in real time.

Another option is to launch your program inside of 'screen', which is a sort-of text-based Terminal application. Screen sessions can be attached and detached, but are nominally meant only to be used by the same user, so if you want to share them between users, it's a big pain in the ass.