Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ucbvax!CITHEX.CALTECH.EDU!carl
From: carl@CITHEX.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Session Logs
Message-ID: <880105125643.04d@CitHex.Caltech.Edu>
Date: 5 Jan 88 21:15:03 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 33


 > Does anybody know of any ways, short of something along the lines of
 > 	SET HOST/LOG 0
 > to get a copy of a terminal session (except, of course, a terminal printer).

Somebody already suggested using a pseudo-terminal driver and software to
capture the terminal session.

 > We are having trouble here in  that  many  users  (students,  at  teacher's
 > request)  use  the  SET  HOST/LOG command to save a session, and then, when
 > things don't work try it again, without closing the  first  session.   This
 > creates  tremendous overhead, both for them ("Why is the machine so slow?")
 > and the staff ("Why is the machine so slow?") :-).

If you don't want to (or can't) use the pseudo-terminal driver, you might
consider setting the MAXJOBS field in the SYSUAF entry for these users to
some small value (for example, 2).  This prevents them from logging in many
jobs at once, and may solve your problem.

 >         I suspect that a solution  could  be  found  by  playing  with  the
 > SYS$OUTPUT  logical,  but  a  lot  of playing with that hasn't hit a viable
 > solution (we need to keep terminal output too!!!).

The only way I can think of to do this has the same drawbacks as SET HOST/LOG:
You could spawn a subprocess which takes its input from a mailbox (assume
you've given it the logical name MAILBOX:) and copies it to both a logfile and
the user's terminal.  Then execute the commands:
	$ SET VERIFY
	$ @TT:/OUTPUT=MAILBOX:
This approach has the additional drawbacks that SYS$OUTPUT is no longer a
terminal, so things like type/page won't work right, and that prompts will
tend to appear a line or two above the end of the output of the previous
command.