LiveFire Labs' UNIX Tip, Trick, or Shell Script of the Week

Capturing a Session's Input and Output - The UNIX script Command - Part I

There are many reasons why a person using UNIX or Linux would want to capture a session's input and output, or in other words log everything that is printed to the screen (including prompts).  A general user may want to retain a sequence of commands for future reference, a programmer may want to capture compiler warning and error messages for a post-compile review, or a system administrator may want to log the steps taken to install a piece of system software in case something goes wrong or if they have to document or repeat the correct installation procedure.

Regardless of the reason, the command used to handle this task is the the UNIX script command.  Running this command will fork a new shell (which shell to use is determined by looking at $SHELL), and will terminate when the new shell is exited with "exit" or CTRL-D.  A message similar to this:

Script started, file is unixfile

is printed when the script is started, and the ending message will be:

Script done, file is unixfile

The syntax for the UNIX script command is:

script [filename]

If a filename is omitted, the default name of "typescript" will be used.  The following is an example of how to use script to capture the execution of a few frequently used UNIX commands:

[root@hawk] # script unixfile
Script started, file is unixfile
[root@hawk] # date
Sat Aug 23 20:14:46 CDT 2003
[root@hawk] # uptime
8:14pm up 3:21, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.01
[root@hawk] # pwd
/tmp
[root@hawk] # hostname
hawk
[root@hawk] # who am i
root /dev/pts/1 Aug 23 20:15
[root@hawk] # exit
Script done, file is unixfile
[root@hawk] #

Now let's display the contents of the script file...

[root@hawk] # cat unixfile
Script started on Sat 23 Aug 2003 08:14:43 PM CDT
[root@hawk] # date
Sat Aug 23 20:14:46 CDT 2003
[root@hawk] # uptime
8:14pm up 3:21, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.01
[root@hawk] # pwd
/tmp
[root@hawk] # hostname
hawk
[root@hawk] # who am i
root /dev/pts/1 Aug 23 20:15
[root@hawk] # exit

script done on Sat 23 Aug 2003 08:15:09 PM CDT
[root@hawk] #

If you try this example on your own system and then vi the script file, you will notice that script also captured control characters (e.g. ^M) in the file.  Next week's tip will present a few options for quickly removing these characters from the file.

Read the NEXT article in this series - Capturing a Session's Input and Output - The UNIX script Command - Part II