Spy on people who are logged in?

Rotwang · 03-17-2004, 02:24 PM

Hey, in AIX there was a way to watch people who have telnetted/sshed into my machine- watch what they type on the command line. Can I do that in linux? My friend is helping me install something and I want to watch how he does it.

thanks

Bebo · 03-17-2004, 02:46 PM

Can't you look in the history file, ~/.bash_history, afterwards? Provided of course that you have bash as your shell, and that the history is enabled.

skunkburner · 03-17-2004, 03:03 PM

You could install a VNC server, two people can share the same desktop.

go look at http://www.realvnc.com

Rotwang · 03-17-2004, 05:27 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by skunkburner
You could install a VNC server, two people can share the same desktop.

go look at http://www.realvnc.com

I have vnc, but each time you log in, it opens a new x session. On windows, we'd be sharing the same screen, but in linux we get different ones.

skunkburner · 03-18-2004, 03:26 AM

If you start vncserver with -alwaysshared and connect both to the same desktop
ie 192.168.1.1:1 (the colon and 1 at the end tells the vnc client to connect to desktop 1)
you'll both see the same desktop.

Bebo · 03-18-2004, 03:38 AM

Isn't vnc a big security risk? What about passwords and encyption?

<EDIT>
It seems I've managed to blurt out a premature question again, so this is Yet Another Edit on my behalf

The security can be significantly improved with SSH: http://www.uk.research.att.com/archive/vnc/sshvnc.html
</EDIT>

skunkburner · 03-18-2004, 05:27 AM

Yes VNC can be security risk, with a max password length of 8 it can be brute forced easily.
But as Rotwang only wanted to watch how a friend installed something, for the short while that would take security isn't really an issue. After all SSH doesn't have a 100% security record either. (and I don't know how to share ssh sessions : ).

Rotwang · 03-18-2004, 10:25 AM

The vnc suggestions is good as an alternative. But does anyone know a way to do what I described- to view other people's command line sessions? Kind of like on the old BBS days where the sysop could jump in...