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On tty2, how do I take a text screenshot of the command line?

neverMind9
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3 Answers3

13

Did you consider the screendump command?

RudiC
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    "Just saying `cat /dev/vcsN ` has a *similar* effect". Then why not just use `cat /dev/vcsN`? – Weijun Zhou Nov 24 '18 at 16:45
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    Try it and see. – RudiC Nov 24 '18 at 16:46
  • Nice. Is there a way to get it to do colour as well? (`screendump` reads from `/dev/vcsa` devices which does have colour information, but it seems to be stripped from the output.) Btw. I like to combine it with the `watch` command to see live output like `watch -n0.1 screendump`. – kasperd Nov 25 '18 at 13:25
  • @WeijunZhou `/dev/vcs` devices don't contain information about the size of the screen, so `cat /dev/vcsN` only works if your terminal window has the same number of characters across as the VC you are capturing. – kasperd Nov 25 '18 at 13:26
4

If you can use tmux or screen, they have the ability to save the scrollback buffer to a file.

Unlike screendump, which is Linux-only, tmux and screen are available for BSD-based OSes too (e.g. macOS, FreeBSD) and won't require special permissions.

jamesdlin
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  • Because of that, I marked this one as accepted. But @RudiC Don't take it personally. Your solution is still the simplest. – neverMind9 Nov 25 '18 at 10:28
  • Those two add another layer; you need to login and then run screen, have another shell, and then can communicate with your CLI. – RudiC Nov 25 '18 at 11:54
2

You can use script for this. It will record a typescript of the terminal session. By default, it will write to ./typescript. Of course, you need to do this in advance so it is not really a "screenshot".

$ script
Script started, file is typescript
$ ls asdf
ls: cannot access asdf: No such file or directory
$ exit
Script done, file is typescript

# Then check the recordings:

$ cat typescript
Script started on Thu 29 Nov 2018 02:52:04 PM CET

$ ls asdf
ls: cannot access asf: No such file or directory
$ exit

Script done on Thu 29 Nov 2018 02:52:09 PM CET
Rolf
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