Bash – How to automatically record all your terminal sessions with script utility

bashkonsolescriptingterminal

What I want to achieve is be able to record my terminal sessions to file automatically whenever I use Yakuake/Konsole.

It's easy to achieve if at the start of my session I do:

script -f /home/$USER/bin/shell_logs/$(date +"%d-%b-%y_%H-%M-%S")_shell.log

But I want to run the above automatically whenever I start Yakuake or open a new tab.

Using .bashrc does not work because it creates endless loop as 'script' opens a new session, which in turn reads .bashrc and starts another 'script' and so on.

So presumably I need to script Yakuake/Konsole somehow to run 'script' once as a new tab gets opened. The question is how?

Best Answer

If someone wants to record their terminal sessions automatically--including SSH sessions(!)--using the script utility, here is how.

Add the following line at the end of .bashrc in your home directory, or otherwise /etc/bash.bashrc if you only want to record all users' sessions. We test for shell's parent process not being script and then run script.

For Linux:

test "$(ps -ocommand= -p $PPID | awk '{print $1}')" == 'script' || (script -f $HOME/$(date +"%d-%b-%y_%H-%M-%S")_shell.log)

For BSD and macOS, change script -f to script -F:

test "$(ps -ocommand= -p $PPID | awk '{print $1}')" == 'script' || (script -F $HOME/$(date +"%d-%b-%y_%H-%M-%S")_shell.log)

That's all!

Now when you open a new terminal you'll see:

Script started, file is /home/username/file_name.log

script will write your sessions to a file in your home directory naming them something like 30-Nov-11_00-11-12_shell.log as a result.

More customization:

You can append your sessions to one large file rather than creating a new one for every session with script -a /path/to/single_log_file
You can adjust where the files are written to by changing the path after script -f (Linux) or script -F (BSD and macOS)

This answer assumes that you have script installed, of course. On Debian-based distributions, script is part of the bsdutils package.

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Bash – Local, timestamped logging of all ssh commands

I was intrigued by your question. I wasn't originally going to give an answer but I got hooked.

This uses expect and it's really a key logger.

#!/usr/bin/expect -f

proc log {msg} {
    puts $::fh "[timestamp -format {%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}]: $msg"
}

set ssh_host [lindex $argv 0]
set ::fh [open "sshlog.$ssh_host" a]

log "{session starts}"

spawn ssh $ssh_host

interact {
    -re "(.)" {
        set char $interact_out(1,string)
        if {$char eq "\r"} {
            log $keystrokes
            set keystrokes ""
        } else {
            append keystrokes $char
        }
        send -- $char
    }
    eof
}

log "{session ends}"

Notes:

it appends to a file with the ssh destination in the name
it is a key logger: if you have not set up ssh keys, you get the user's password in the log file
it is foiled by tab completion: if the user types uptTab (for the uptime command), you'll get "upt\t" in the log file, not "uptime"
it grabs characters in "raw" mode: if the user is a bad typist, you'll get lots of ^? (backspace characters) in the log file.

Bash – Start all terminal sessions within /usr/bin/script

I don't think putting it at the bottom of your rcfile would do much good - all of the state you declared beforehand would get wiped out when script loaded a new shell until it tried to load the rcfile and etc and etc forever. I just made it work on my terminal like:

$ x=;bash --rcfile /dev/fd/3 3<<\$x
    export S_LOG=~/".log/$(date --iso-8601=second).log"
    exec   script -aeqfc "bash   --rcfile /dev/fd/3 -i" "$S_LOG" \
3<<""
    alias success='echo it worked'
    PS1='script $ '
    exec 3<&-

$x
script $ success
it worked
script $ cat "$S_LOG"
Script started on Mon Dec 14 15:43:28 2015
script $ success
it worked
script $ cat "$S_LOG"
script $

And so I think you'd do better to locate it at the head of your rc-file, and then exec a new shell to read the rest of it after the point you call the new shell.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Bash – Local, timestamped logging of all ssh commands

Bash – Start all terminal sessions within /usr/bin/script

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