saving console i/o

[James Cummings]

In article <5c1eT1w163w at wvus.wciu.edu> pete at wvus.wciu.edu (Pete Gregory) writes:
>We need to find a way to capture all /dev/console i/o for saving in a file,
>while being transparent to anyone on that console.
>
>                We'd like to be able to do the same on our Unisys 6000/70's.
>These are AT&T SysV.3 machines without 'typescript' or whatever that Berkeley
>utility is.

	On an AT&T 3B2/700 and friends running SysV 3.2.1 there is a command 
called "conslog".  I don't know that a Unisys running System V will have it,
but if it's rev 3.x.x possibly.  

	conslog -a 	Activates the console logger.
	conslog -d	Deactivates the console logger.
	conslog -r	Reads the console log file.
				(and can be done from the console only)

	There is a specific warning in the manual.

	When the logger is active, only the "conslog -r" command should be
used to display the log file on the console.  If a command such as "cat" is
used to display the log file on the console when the logger is active, the 
contents will be displayed and appended to the log file as the are being 
displayed, creating an INFINITE loop.  This will go on indefinitely or
until a break is entered.

	That should effectively make your day.

	The delivered conslog on our 3B2s was set with permission 555.
I have changed that to 500 to require root to start, stop, and read.  In
my mind this at least reduces the chance that a regular user can get to
our console (a situation that should be avoided) and do something I don't
want them to do.