ispy
ispy is a python tool for monitoring the output of terminals and processes.
Demo
ispy watching a bash session that lists some files and opens vim:
The same thing, using strace:
Installation
pip install ispy
Alternatively, if you aren't a Python person or don't want to install it
(since it must be run as root), you can download a fully packaged
pex file and run without
installing:
wget https://github.com/dellis23/ispy/blob/master/bin/pex/ispy.pex?raw=true -O ispy; chmod +x ispy
Usage
# ispy <pid_to_watch>
Use Cases
- Watching someone else's terminal
- Watching the output of a backgrounded process
Notes
Not intended for production!
It's probably buggy.
This was mainly an exercise in learning about ptrace for myself. I
haven't done anything more than smoke testing on a couple of
operating systems.
This uses the same system call as strace (ptrace), which is heavy-handed
and has a performance impact. It is not recommended to use in production or
against mission-critical applications. It's also written in Python, so it's even slower.
Supported OSs
This has been tested as working on:
- Ubuntu
- CentOS
This has been tested as not working on:
- OSX
Thanks
Thanks to the creator and maintainers of python-ptrace; this project depends on it.