NAME
ttysnoop - snoop on a user’s tty
SYNOPSIS
ttysnoop [pty]
ttysnoops
DESCRIPTION
The ttysnoop / ttysnoops client-server combo can be used to snoop (watch)
on a user’s login tty. The server (ttysnoops) is usually started by
getty(8) or telnetd(8) and reads the file /etc/snooptab to find out which
tty’s should be cloned and which programs to run on them (usually
/bin/login). A tty may be snooped through a pre-determined (ie. fixed)
device, or through a dynamically allocated pseudo-tty (pty). This is also
specified in the /etc/snooptab file. To connect to the pty, the client
ttysnoop should be used. The available pseudo terminals pty are present
as sockets in the directory /var/spool/ttysnoop/.
Format of /etc/snooptab
The /etc/snooptab file may contain comment lines (starting with a ’#’),
empty lines, or entries for tty’s that should be snooped upon. The format
of such an entry is as follows:
tty snoop-device type program
where tty is the leaf-name of the tty that should be snooped upon (eg.
ttyS2, not /dev/ttyS2) OR the wildcard ’*’, which matches ANY tty.
snoop-device is the device through which tty should be snooped (eg.
/dev/tty8) OR the literal constant "socket". The latter is used to tell
ttysnoops that the snoop-device will be a dynamically allocated pty.
type specifies the type of program that should be run, currently
recognized types are "init", "user" and "login" although the former two
aren’t really needed. Finally, program is the full pathname to the
program to run when ttysnoops has cloned tty onto snoop-device.
EXAMPLE
The following example /etc/snooptab file should illustrate the typical
use of ttysnoop / ttysnoops:
#
# example /etc/snooptab
#
ttyS0 /dev/tty7 login /bin/login
ttyS1 /dev/tty8 login /bin/login
#
# the wildcard tty should always be the last one in the file
#
* socket login /bin/login
#
# example end
#
With the above example, whenever a user logs in on /dev/ttyS0 or
/dev/ttyS1, either tty will be snooped through /dev/tty7 or /dev/tty8
respectively. Any other tty’s will be snooped through a pty that will be
allocated at the time of login. The system-administrator can then run
ttysnoop pty to snoop through the pty. Note that it is up to the system-
administrator to setup getty and/or telnetd so that they execute
ttysnoops instead of /bin/login.
SEE ALSO
getty(8), telnetd(8)
FILES
/etc/snooptab
BUGS
The program is unable to do any terminal control-code translations for
the original tty and the snoop-device. I doubt it will ever do this.
AUTHOR
Carl Declerck, carl@miskatonic.inbe.net