Very Computer

Hi,
 I'm looking for a program to watch terminals (tty's) on a unix machine.
Something similar to the Watcher program on the Vax. I want to be able to
Watch what someone types on their screen. Thanks,

Ken

I assume you're aware of the possible "invasion-of-privacy"
implications of posessing/writing/using such a program?
(see the thread about sysadmins reading users' email)

Dave
--
[]        Dave Holland        []     Engineering Department     []

: >Hi,
: > I'm looking for a program to watch terminals (tty's) on a unix machine.
: >Something similar to the Watcher program on the Vax. I want to be able to
: >Watch what someone types on their screen. Thanks,
: >
: >Ken
: >

: I assume you're aware of the possible "invasion-of-privacy"
: implications of posessing/writing/using such a program?
: (see the thread about sysadmins reading users' email)

Yes, I've been told all about this area... I was just wondering why
such a program exsists for the Vax(VMS) and none for Unix machines?
Seems strange seeing that Unix is suppose to be superior to VMS.

Ken

: Dave
: --
: []        Dave Holland        []     Engineering Department     []

There are a couple of them out there.  There's MeToo from CAD Artisans and
Peek from Computronics.  We've done 30 day evals on both of them (on a SunOS
platform) and decided to go with Peek.  We've been running Peek on our old
Prime system for years.    Peek runs on a few
different platforms (HP and IBM, I think) in addition to Sun.  I don't know
about MeToo.    There also one floating around on the net.  I forgot the name,
but I wasn't able to get it to work.  Actually, I couldn't even get it to
compile.  All of the programs require that either a "view host" program be run
in order to be able to view the session.  In Peek's case, you refer to their
program as the shell in the /etc/passwd file, then the peek program calls up
the real shell.  MeToo requires a second login process, which is why we
decided not to go with it.  So the Unix ones aren't transparent to sysadmins,
but can be made transparent to users.

Just as a disclaimer, we only use the programs when someone calls us with a
problem.  

Everyone here loves it.  We get user's problems solved faster and that's
what matters to them.  There's rarely a confidentality issue since we only
view screens of people who've already called us for help.

Indeed -- this can be misused.

However, back before people starting considering how to misuse such things
(well, maybe not before), TOPS-20 had this capability in the command ADVISE.
In a university environment, it was a useful command in that a user in trouble
could request help from a superuser via the WRITE (I think) command and the
superuser could take over the user's terminal with ADVISE and show the user
how to handle the problem.  With these commands, it didn't matter if the user
and superuser were sitting next to each other or were clear across the campus
from one another.

Of course, the problem was that power corrupts and one of the sysadmins used a
variation on the command to see what people were doing without them knowing.
Then again, one of the hackers got wind of this and developed a WATCH program
that could alert a user if someone was SPYing on his terminal (it could also
watch for friends logging in/out).

I'm not sure, but I suspect this inspired the VMS Watcher program.  I'm not
sure how useful these programs would be in a X-window environment.
--
====================================================================
David Masterson                                 Consilium, Inc.
(415) 691-6311                                  640 Clyde Ct.

====================================================================
"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do
 the work of one extraordinary man."
-- Elbert Hubbard

...yet.
-- Karl Lehenbauer

Quote:>Hi,
> I'm looking for a program to watch terminals (tty's) on a unix machine.
>Something similar to the Watcher program on the Vax. I want to be able to
>Watch what someone types on their screen. Thanks,

There is a commercial package called Double Vision which does just this.
It is available on most platforms (sorry I don't have any telephone
numbers or anything).

Aris

: >Hi,
: > I'm looking for a program to watch terminals (tty's) on a unix machine.
: >Something similar to the Watcher program on the Vax. I want to be able to
: >Watch what someone types on their screen. Thanks,

: There is a commercial package called Double Vision which does just this.
: It is available on most platforms (sorry I don't have any telephone
: numbers or anything).

Hi,

I've just evaluated Double Vision and think its an excellent program. In
or environment we are very well aware of the privacy etc. implications,
but with users spread over thousands of kilometers it is sometimes the
only way we can give support.

A similar program was posted a while ago to "comp.sources.misc" called
'attach'. I think it was written for SUN's. I tried to get it going on our
HP with no joy. I also saw something called 'ttyspy' which also allowed
the capturing of remote terminals. Don't know for which machine though.

You can also achieve something similar with the UNIX 'script' command. If
a user types in 'script /dev/pty/ttyq4' a transcript of his session will
be written to '/dev/pty/ttyq4'.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

I just read an advert for DoubleVision today, in the Nov/Dec issue of
"SysAdmin" -- as I recall, it runs on SCO, IBM, HP-UX, with DG on the
way soon... no mention of Sun (neither Solaris 1.x nor 2.x).

--
Jonathan B. Horen            |   If Karen Carpenter and Mama Cass had
Sr. System Administrator     |   only shared that ham sandwich, both of
Applicom Systems, Ltd.       |   them might still be alive today.

Would it also work if the user did
   script /some/directory/logfile
and I did
   tail -f /the/same/logfile
so that we might keep a log for further discussion? Or does this not
work well because of file buffering (getting me the contents too late)?

--

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Nussdorfer Laende 11                      Please correct me, if I am wrong!
A-1190 Wien, Austria (Europe)             Make love, not flame wars.  :-)