Linux – How to Clean Up Output of ‘script’ Command

linuxscript

I'm using the linux 'script' command http://www.linuxcommand.org/man_pages/script1.html to track some interactive sessions. The output files from that contain unprintable characters, including my backspace keystrokes.

Is there a way to tidy these output files up so they only contain what was displayed on screen?

Or is there another way to record an interactive shell session (input and output)?

Best Answer

If you want to view the file, then you can send the output through col -bp; this interprets the control characters. Then you can pipe through less, if you like.

col -bp typescript | less -R

On some systems col wouldn't accept a filename argument, use this syntax instead:

col -bp <typescript | less -R

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Linux – How to create several screen sessions on startup in Linux

To run a command when the system boots, schedule it for @reboot in cron. See man 5 crontab for details. This means your crontab line should look like

@reboot screen -m ...

Don't use su for that, put the command in the crontab of the user who should run the command. That way, the user can manage the commands without root's intervention. (But if you wanted to run a command as a system user without letting that system user change the command for security reasons, somethnig like su -c /path/to/command www-data in /etc/rc.local would be better.)

Screen closes a window when its command finishes and terminates the session when its last window is closed. If you want to see the script's output after it's finished, run another command after it to wait for input. For example, to leave the window open until you press Enter in it:

screen sh -c './script.sh; read'

Remember that screen only keeps a finite number of history lines. Unless script.sh sometimes requires interaction, you would be better served by redirecting its output to a file. If it does require interaction, you can use screen's log command to send output to a file (and then it's not a problem if the screen session terminates when it doesn't require input).

Bash – How to compare two files with a shell script

In bash:

diff --brief <(sort file1) <(sort file2)

Best Answer

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Linux – How to create several screen sessions on startup in Linux

Bash – How to compare two files with a shell script

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