How to watch other console without notification?

Question

I want to see what is freelance admin doing to my server. But all solutions i have found - screen, conspy, vnc does't met my needs.

Conspy is great but i have to ask free-lancer to run it first to see what is happening. I want to connect into other tty and see whats happening without sending keys. Only viewing.

Is it possible?

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 29 '13 at 11:47

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How about hiring a freelancer you can trust? This kind of spying takes a lot of time/effort, and you're not even guaranteed to see when he's doing something bad.

answered Mar 29 '13 at 11:47

Dennis Kaarsemaker

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 29 '13 at 11:51

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A simple, if not completely secure option, would be to set their shell to exec script, e.g. in ~/.profile, ~/.bashrc, etc, set:

exec script /path/to/logs/script_$(id -nu)_$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S)

Note I say this isn't secure, because they could delete or modify the log file. It would allow you to tail the log though.

answered Mar 29 '13 at 11:51

James O'Gorman

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script logs can't be tailed, you need to use scriptreplay :) – Dennis Kaarsemaker Mar 29 '13 at 11:51
Ah yes, that's true. Although you don't have to use scriptreplay once the log is done (i.e. user has logged out). It works fine to read it with `less -r`. – James O'Gorman Mar 29 '13 at 11:54

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 29 '13 at 13:28

although Im agree with Dennis Kaarsemaker but you may like to use following tools:

https://github.com/a2o/snoopy http://sniffy.sourceforge.net/

another solution without installing thrid party tools on your server will be using the "w" command which display which user execute what commands.

How to watch other console without notification?

3 Answers3