# Screen buffer / Scroll Lock



## FestusHagen (Jan 12, 2009)

Hi All,

Sorry for asking this Q, I tried searching but don't know what to search for.

The screen buffer ... What you get when you use Scroll Lock and scroll back through the screen buffer.

Is this data in a log someplace?
Can it be captured some how?

And I don't mean the dmesg info.

Thanks

-Enjoy
fh  : )_~


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## ale (Jan 12, 2009)

You can select with the mouse and middle click in vi.
Or you can use _script_.
There are also textproc/scr2txt and graphics/scr2png ports.
What are you trying to do?


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## brd@ (Jan 12, 2009)

You might find what you need by enabling the console.log in /etc/syslog.conf. Make sure to touch(1) and chmod(1) 600 it before you enable it here:

```
# uncomment this to log all writes to /dev/console to /var/log/console.log
console.info                                   /var/log/console.log
```
Then restart syslogd:

```
/etc/rc.d/syslogd restart
```


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## FestusHagen (Jan 12, 2009)

ale said:
			
		

> You can select with the mouse and middle click in vi.
> Or you can use _script_.
> There are also textproc/scr2txt and graphics/scr2png ports.
> What are you trying to do?



I want to keep some of the information that's in the scrollback buffer at times.

Sometimes things happen so fast I miss whats been displayed, Sometimes Configuration info is displayed that I would like to keep, Sometimes it's already gone from the buffer and I've missed it...

I don't like/want to re-direct ">" all the time, sometimes it doesn't work, sometimes I just plain forget to re-direct.

It would be nice If I could just hit a key and everything that's in the buffer and added until turned off goes to a file.

No X, Pure Text ...

Thanks

-Enjoy
fh  : )_~


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## FestusHagen (Jan 12, 2009)

brd@ said:
			
		

> You might find what you need by enabling the console.log in /etc/syslog.conf. Make sure to touch(1) and chmod(1) 600 it before you enable it here:
> 
> ```
> # uncomment this to log all writes to /dev/console to /var/log/console.log
> ...



I suspect this will do real fine .. :e .. Havn't tried it yet!

Thanks very much!

On the other hand ... duh! Now I feel stupid, I didn't even think of "console", I was thinking "terminal"! :r

-Enjoy
fh  : )_~


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## FestusHagen (Jan 12, 2009)

brd@ said:
			
		

> You might find what you need by enabling the console.log in /etc/syslog.conf. Make sure to touch(1) and chmod(1) 600 it before you enable it here:
> 
> ```
> # uncomment this to log all writes to /dev/console to /var/log/console.log
> ...



Nope, Not what I was looking for, This appears to just log messages.

I suspect what I am looking for would have to be for each tty, basically I just want to record everything (except passwords) that's typed or print'ed to each tty.

Thanks

-Enjoy
fh  : )_~


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## aragon (Jan 13, 2009)

You could use script(1) as already suggested, but start it from your login shell's rc using tty(1) to generate the output file name.


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## FestusHagen (Jan 15, 2009)

aragon said:
			
		

> You could use script(1) as already suggested, but start it from your login shell's rc using tty(1) to generate the output file name.



Yup, Thank you all ...

I tried in invoking "script" from .cshrc (not real hard YET!!) and it ran wild and I had to kill the session, just have not been back to it yet. I checked out tty(1) and I have yet to learn how to break apart a path in script!

Thanks

-Enjoy
fh  : )_~


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## valuequest (Apr 23, 2011)

The function to toggle into the screen buffer with the Scroll Lock key does not appear to be working on my 8.2-RELEASE system.  What configuration file do I need to examine to figure out why not?

Might this possibly have something to do with the hardware configuration of the machine (a laptop machine plugged into a laptop dock station)?


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## wblock@ (Apr 23, 2011)

valuequest said:
			
		

> The function to toggle into the screen buffer with the Scroll Lock key does not appear to be working on my 8.2-RELEASE system.  What configuration file do I need to examine to figure out why not?
> 
> Might this possibly have something to do with the hardware configuration of the machine (a laptop machine plugged into a laptop dock station)?



A lot of laptops require pressing the Fn key along with the Scroll Lock.


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## SirDice (Apr 29, 2011)

FestusHagen said:
			
		

> basically I just want to record everything (except passwords) that's typed or print'ed to each tty.


Have a look at watch(8) and snp(4). They might do what you want.


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## jrm@ (Apr 29, 2011)

FestusHagen said:
			
		

> ..., basically I just want to record everything (except passwords) that's typed or print'ed to each tty.



sysutils/tmux might do the trick.  You can make the history size quite large and there are simple ways to save part or all of the buffer.  For example I have


```
set-option -g history-limit 65536
```

in ~/.tmux.conf.

The openbsd folks like it enough to include it in the base system.

http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=tmux&sektion=1

Check out save-buffer in the man page.


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