[Gllug] Remote Viewing of a program running on a local terminal

[rich at annexia.org]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 03:55:22PM -0000, Calvin la Cock wrote:
> Hi ,
> 
> I know this isn't a programming list , but I recon this question is more of
> a sys-admin issue than programming.
> 
> 
> now that I've got everyone confused on the topic, here is the question :
> 
> If I have a program running on say Linux on terminal 1. Is there a way that
> I can see that exact screen ( terminal ) as it is on the local computer , if
> I sit halfway around the world and try and access that pc remotely. I need a
> way to be able to check the status of software running non-locally.

No one else's got the answer to this yet.

The answer is yes, _if_ you have root access. You don't need to do
any particular preparation first.

For console windows, use the 'screendump' program:

screendump -s 1

to capture console [Alt][Ctrl][F1], etc. You'll need to be root to
do this (obviously!). 'screendump' is just a wrapper which essentially
does 'cat /dev/vcsaX', so you might use that instead if you don't
have the 'screendump' program.

For X screens it's a bit more complex. First of all, you'll need
to 'su' to the user. This ought to ensure you have access to their
display (perhaps other people can fill in the details here if, for
example, the other user is themselves remotely logged in over ssh).

Then do:

xwd -root -silent -display :0 > /tmp/dump.xwd

This is in the rather obscure X-windows-dump format. You'll need
to use a utility such as 'xwdtopnm' to convert it to a more reasonable
format.

HTH,

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Red Hat Inc. (London, UK) http://www.redhat.com/software/ccm
http://www.annexia.org/ Freshmeat projects: http://freshmeat.net/users/rwmj

-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug