Monitor/spy on tty1 or see the output from tty1 via SSH?

Question

I started an fsck locally from tty1 on my Linux server and it seems to take forever. Would I have thought about this before or known I would have run a screen fsck.

Is there any way to monitor tty1 via SSH or see the output from the fsck process running? I don't need to interact, just see how it's going.

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

6

If tty1 is the first virtual console on a Linux system, you can view its contents via /dev/vcs1:

cat /dev/vcs1

(as root).

(Thanks to Sato Katsura for pointing out that this is Linux-specific!)

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Community

1

answered Aug 29 '16 at 08:09

Stephen Kitt

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Brilliant! That worked like a charm. Thank you! – winny Aug 29 '16 at 08:28
This is of course Linux-specific. OpenBSD f.i. doesn't have `/dev/vcs*`. – Satō Katsura Aug 29 '16 at 09:02
@SatoKatsura indeed, thanks for the reminder! I've updated my answer to point out that this is Linux-specific. – Stephen Kitt Aug 29 '16 at 09:08
@SatoKatsura I'll update my question too since it's on Linux. – winny Aug 29 '16 at 13:00

Monitor/spy on tty1 or see the output from tty1 via SSH?

1 Answers1