Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2003 07:18:18 +1000 From: Gregory White Subject: Re: tty To: Linux Users Of Victoria Paul Arch asked: > can you somehow 'capture' the output from a tty? specifically I have > some output on tty12 that would be good to capture to a file. Or > perhaps even 'tail' it ? A neat and nifty trick, is that any tty can be saved and restored easily. From a program or script, to save or restore a console(tty) open up the following device (file spec): /dev/vcs# (where # is the tty number) When you read the device, the current contents of the tty are saved. When write a saved tty file to the same device/file spec. Greg White RM adds: Here's the relevant excerpt from the kernel source code Documentation/devices.txt file: 7 char Virtual console capture devices 0 = /dev/vcs Current vc text contents 1 = /dev/vcs1 tty1 text contents ... 63 = /dev/vcs63 tty63 text contents 128 = /dev/vcsa Current vc text/attribute contents 129 = /dev/vcsa1 tty1 text/attribute contents ... 191 = /dev/vcsa63 tty63 text/attribute contents NOTE: These devices permit both read and write access.