"recording" xterm

jorants · 11-21-2012, 08:36 AM

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to save (and than send but that is not importand) everything that i see in my xterm window.
the goal is to do this in real time, so every time i type something or output is produced the information is updated.
the best thing would be to to get a file that contains all the characters and basically opening it in a texteditor would show the last state.

I tryed screen with both log and hardcopy.
hardcopy got me the desired result but only wrtes the file once and doesn't keep updating.
log keeps updating but it fails like hell as soon as i start a ncurses program like vim of nano.

i'm trying to find kind of a comination of the two.

tanx in advance,

Joran

unSpawn · 11-21-2012, 09:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jorants

I tryed screen with both log and hardcopy.

What are these "log" and "hardcopy"?

Quote:

Originally Posted by jorants

hardcopy got me the desired result but only wrtes the file once and doesn't keep updating.
log keeps updating but it fails like hell as soon as i start a ncurses program like vim of nano.

Escape sequences used for positioning and colors will fsck up output no matter what. The only solution providing an accurate representation would involve screen recording but then you obviously loose text extraction capability. As for "log" failing, have you tried massaging the output? I would recommend using 'rootsh' but even its log isn't free from escape sequences but with

Code:

cat file|perl -pe 's/\e([^\[\]]|\[.*?[a-zA-Z]|\].*?\a)//g'|col -bx

here's for example output from running 'system-config-network-tui' (a ncurses app) inside a screen session:

Code:

┤ Network Configuration ├┐
│                         │
│    Loading Device       │
│    Configuration        │
│                         │
└─────────────────────────┘
                           <Tab>/<Alt-Tab> between elements   |  <Space> selects   |  <F12> next screenHardware
                Profile





                          ┌──────┤ Select Action ├──────┐
│                             │
│   Edit Devices              │
│   Edit DNS configuration    │
│                             │
│                             │
│                             │
│  ┌───────────┐   ┌──────┐   │
│  │ Save&Quit │   │ Quit │   │
│  └───────────┘   └──────┘   │
│                             │
│                             │
└─────────────────────────────┘
Devices           Save&Quit  Save&Quit  Quit
 ┌──────┐
 │ Quit │
└──────┌──────┐
│ Quit │
└──────┘

jorants · 11-21-2012, 10:20 AM

Tanx, i will take a look at it.

and about log and hardcopy: C-a h in screen for hardcopy and c-a H voor log.
Log just copys all output to a file and keeps doing so, hardcopy copys te current screen.
it would be nice to hardcopy every 0.1 seconde or so.

unSpawn · 11-21-2012, 10:25 AM

Thanks, now I know why the terms did sound familiar...

dru8274 · 11-21-2012, 10:50 PM

You can use the script command to record an xterm session. That said, an ncurses program will fill the typescript file with unreadable escape chars. But if you tell script to save both a typescript file and a timing file, then your xterm session can be replayed perfectly with scriptreplay. True, even if you have been using ncurses etc.

Not an exact fit to your original question, but close enough for me to mention.

Code:

$ script -f -t transcript.log 2>timing.log

# Do some work here, ncurses etc if you like...
$ exit

# To replay the session...
$ scriptreplay timing.log transcript.log

Happy with ur solution... then tick "yes" and mark as Solved!