8.2.1 Recording shell activities

System administration involves much more elaborate tasks in a Unix environment than in an ordinary personal computer environment. Make sure to know the most basic means of configuration in case you need to recover from system trouble. X11-based GUI configuration tools look nice and convenient but are often unsuitable in these emergency situations.

In this context, recording shell activities is a good practice, especially as root.

Emacs: Use M-x shell to start recording into a buffer, and use C-x C-w to write the buffer to a file.

Shell: Use the screen command with "^A H" as described in Console switching with screen, Section 8.6.28; or use the script command.

     $ script
     Script started, file is typescript
      ... do whatever ...
      Ctrl-D
     $ col -bx <typescript >savefile
     $ vi savefile

The following can be used instead of script:

     $ bash -i 2>&1 | tee typescript