How can I hook on to one terminal's output from another terminal?

I came across this one tool called ttylog. It's a Perl program available on CPAN here. It has a couple caveats, one being that I could only figure out how to attach to a terminal that was created as part of someone ssh'ing into my box. The other being that you have to run it with elevated privileges (i.e. root or sudo).

But it works!

For example

First ssh into your box in TERM#1:

TERM#1% ssh saml@grinchy

Note this new terminal's tty:

TERM#1% tty
/dev/pts/3

Now in another terminal (TERM#2) run this command:

TERM#2% ttylog pts/3
DEBUG: Scanning for psuedo terminal pts/3
DEBUG: Psuedo terminal [pts/3] found.
DEBUG: Found parent sshd pid [13789] for user [saml]

Now go back to TERM#1 and type stuff, it'll show up in TERM#2.

All the commands I tried, (top, ls, etc.) worked without incident using ttylog.

Indeed it is. The /dev/vcs* and /dev/vcsa* devices corresponds to the /dev/tty* devices (the virtual terminals). F1=tty1=vcs1/vcsa1 and so on. The vcs/vcsa is like tty for the "current" virtual terminal.

As root, you can just cat these devices (e.g. cat /dev/vcs2), and see what's on the corresponding VT (e.g. /dev/tty2 the on on F2) like taking a snapshot. vcsa* differs from vcs* in that they include information about the dimensions of the terminal (the screen). Mind you, it's just a raw snapshot of the characters as they show on the screen - gathered from the memory allocated to the terminal - so don't expect nice, easily parseble output.

The drawback is that if the information flashes past too fast, it may be difficult to capture. Perhaps tail -f /dev/vcs1 will work, if you need to follow several screenfulls (haven't tried myself)? It may be easiest to simply redirect it to a file first. It may also be a good idea to use a VT (F1-F6) to look at it, as the terminals will have the same dimensions. In my experience, it's best to use the vcs* - not the vcsa* - devices.

If that doesn't work, perhaps one of the "big brotherish" packages that allows an admin to keep an eye on the activity on a terminal may work.

PS: I forgot to ask what OS you use. This is for Linux, though similar devices probably exists on other OSes too. Try searching for "virtual console memory" among the man-pages for devices.

Look at:

man 1 script

For example:

script -f /dev/tty1

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