Display output of one xterm on another

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1

Setup:
Two users, each likely on Windows PCs, using either putty or SecureCRT to connect to a remote Solaris server. The connection could be either telnet or ssh.

Wanted:
How can the output of one users xterm be directed to the other user so that you can easily allow someone to see what you are doing?

Back in early 2005, someone at work was helping me troubleshoot a problem and he somehow directed his output onto my xterm. All he asked for was my IP address. I don't know if the output was also being displayed for him or not. Around that time, I went overseas on a 2 year assignment. When I got back early last year, I went to the only two people I could think of that I might have been working with back in 2005 and asked them about this. Both said it wasn't them and they didn't know how to do it. I have played around with it a little but have not been able to make it work and I find that it would be pretty useful.

Has anyone here done this, or know how to do it?

2

Maybe he sent you an xterm (assigned your IP to the DISPLAY variable) and used the -e option to start a program in that xterm window?

3

I've tried sending an xterm but no luck getting output into it.

I don't remember if he sent me an xterm or somehow attached to the existing xterm but it seems like he did send me an xterm. The session involved TimesTen database and sql queries to check the data. I want to say I was able to see the commands as he typed them as well as the output. But it's been too long, you know? Surely he had to also be able to see what output was being produced since he was walking me through it.

4

one way (most probably not the best) that comes to my mind would be (using ksh)

export DISPLAY=your.ip
touch /path/to/file
xterm -e tail -f /path/to/file &
tail -f /path/to/file

That session sends you the xterm and shows what the other one sees.
Then have another session doing the input part, redirecting the output:

ksh 1>>/path/to/file
your/queries/here
5

possibly was using kibitz:

http://expect.nist.gov/example/kibitz.man.html
6

I'm the product manager for SecureCRT and there's an undocumented feature in SecureCRT 6.0 and later that allows you to do this. Here are the steps:

  1. In SecureCRT, open the Session Options dialog for the dialog that you want to allow someone else to monitor.
  2. Go to the "Mapped Keys" category and click the "Map a Key" button. For the Function, select "SSH Function" and for the SSH Function, select "TOGGLE_MONITOR_SERVER".
  3. Connect to the session. When you want to let someone else monitor the session, press the mapped key you selected in step 2. The first time you do this, you will need to generate a public key. A dialog will be displayed that allows you to specify the information that will be needed by the person who will be monitoring the session.
  4. Give the other person the information from the dialog in step 3. When they connect, you will see a message in SecureCRT that they are connected. They will then be able to see everything in your SecureCRT session.
  5. To end the monitoring session, you can press the mapped key again to terminate the server monitor, have the other person log out, or disconnect your session in SecureCRT.

The session being monitored can use any protocol, but the session doing the monitoring must use SSH2. If you try it, I'd be interested in any feedback you have about this feature.

Maureen

7

If I want to see what a user is doing I just tell them to script -f and then I tail -f typescript. It's simple enough for users to understand.

8

I will try to make some time to look into this. I, personally, do not use SecureCRT but a number of my co-workers do. I'm more invested in seeing this work the way I want with putty at the moment.

Simple enough, yes, but not what was asked. Script, along with Cero's post, is quite possibly close enough to what was done. Oddly enough, I'd completely forgotten about script.

9

As it turns out, he was using xkibitz.