Gaijin wrote: > On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 09:00:11AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote: > >> Apparently there is a scrollback buffer in the kernel >> but I never got it to work. >> > > Do you know about the 'script' command that will copy all screen > I/O to a file? Run without parameters, script will log everything to a > file in the current directory called "typescript". Use the "exit" > command to exit console logging. > Yes, that isn't what I'm interested in. There's screen (1) as well, which in combination with script (1) lets you have multiple windows open. One can also direct logs and such to tty7 and read them with Alt+F7 from the console. I was specifically interested in a scrollback buffer that is apparently supposed to be part of the kernel and wouldn't require redirecting to a file like you suggest with script (1). One doesn't always know how much output will be generated when running a command and often one finds out too late that speech stops and text will not be spoken which has scrolled off the screen. A good example is when I cat a README file. I don't need to make a typescript because it's already a file on disk. I don't really want to reread the file with more (1) when only a small amount of text wasn't spoken. A scrollback buffer would be ideal. Besides, I don't want typescripts taking up large amounts of disk space and I don't want to keep a record of every command with output for security and privacy reasons. The .bash_history is bad enough. Thanks anyway for the suggestion though. That is a good idea when upgrading so you can see if anything went wrong and what.
