Record your Terminal activity using ‘Script’ Command

http://www.ostechnix.com/record-your-terminal-activity-using-script-command

As a System administrator, you might execute lot of commands in the Terminal everyday. Sometimes you might want to refer the entire command history along with all respective outputs later. And, If you’re a programmer and write a program that displays a really long output in Terminal, you can’t scroll up to certain limit and can’t view the entire output of your Terminal session. As a technical writer, I must include what command I entered in the Terminal and what was the result I got in my articles. So, I believe It is always a best idea to record the Terminal session, and keep it aside for future reference. There are many tools out there to record your Desktop. Unfortunately, there are no such tools for servers that only has CLI session. Luckily, we have a simple command called script that really helpful to make typescript of everything printed on your Terminal.

Script command allows you to record everything you do in your Terminal, and saves the output in a text file. This command comes pre-installed with most Linux, and Unix-like operating systems.

In this brief tutorial, let me show you how to use script command.

Script command usage

When you’re ready to recording the Terminal activity, just type:

$ script

You will get a message something like below.

Script started, file is typescript

Now, everything you entered in the Terminal will be saved in a file called typescript.

Also, you can give a custom name to the typescript by specifying a file name of your choice as shown below.

$ script -a my_terminal_session

Now, Let us type few commands, and see how it works.

$ whoami

$ uname -a

$ cd /home/sk/Soft_Backup

$ ls -l

$ mkdir ostechnix

$ rmdir ostechnix

That’s enough for now. You can try as many commands as you want to record. Once you are done, type ‘exit’ in the Terminal to stop recording.

$ exit

Sample output:

exit
Script done, file is typescript

As you see in the above screenshot, the script command will be stored in file called “typescript” in the current working directory.

Now, let us go ahead, and check what we did so far in the Terminal.

Check script command output

$ cat typescript

Sample output:

Script started on Friday 18 March 2016 01:29:06 PM IST
sk@sk:~$ whoami
sk
sk@sk:~$ uname -a
Linux sk 4.4.5-040405-generic #201603091931 SMP Thu Mar 10 00:34:17 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
sk@sk:~$ cd /home/sk/Soft_Backup
sk@sk:~/Soft_Backup$ ls -l
total 16
drwxrwxr-x 2 sk sk 4096 Nov 12 2014 Linux Soft
drwxrwxr-x 5 sk sk 4096 May 30 2015 OS Images
drwxrwxr-x 30 sk sk 4096 Mar 11 17:46 VHD's
drwxrwxr-x 17 sk sk 4096 Dec 30 11:48 Windows Soft
sk@sk:~/Soft_Backup$ mkdir ostechnix
sk@sk:~/Soft_Backup$ rmdir ostechnix
sk@sk:~/Soft_Backup$ exit
exit

Script done on Friday 18 March 2016 01:29:44 PM IST

Voila! As you see in the above output, Script command recorded and displayed everything I have entered in the Terminal. For your easy understanding, I have marked the commands that I executed in bold letters.

You could use the output for your assignment, or just save this output for future reference, and so on.

For further details, I recommend you to refer the man pages.

$ man script

That’s all I can write about script command now. If you want a hardcopy record of the Terminal session for future reference, or for a assignment, script command is good tool to try.

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Cheers!