NAME¶

ttyrec - a tty recorder

SYNOPSIS¶

ttyrec [options] -- <command> [command options]

legacy compatibility mode:

ttyrec -e <command> [options] [ttyrec file name]

OPTIONS¶

-z, --uuid UUID

specify an UUID (can be any string) that will appear in the ttyrec output file names, and kept with SIGUSR1 rotations (default: own PID)

-f, --output FILE

full path of the first ttyrec file to write to (autogenerated if omitted)

-d, --dir FOLDER

folder where to write the ttyrec files (taken from -f if omitted, defaulting to working directory if both -f and -d are omitted)

-F, --name-format FMT

custom strftime-compatible format string to qualify the full path of the output files, including the SIGUSR1 rotated ones

-a, --append

open the ttyrec output file in append mode instead of write-clobber mode

-Z

enable on-the-fly compression if available, silently fallback to no compression if not

--zstd

force on-the-fly compression of output file using zstd, the resulting file will have a '.ttyrec.zst' extension

--max-flush-time S

specify the maximum number of seconds after which we'll force zstd to flush its output buffers to ensure that even somewhat quiet sessions gets regularly written out to disk, default is 15

-l, --level LEVEL

set compression level, must be between 1 and 19 for zstd, default is 3

-n, --count-bytes

count the number of bytes out and print it on termination (experimental)

-t, --lock-timeout S

lock session on input timeout after S seconds

--warn-before-lock S

warn S seconds before locking (see --lock-timeout)

-k, --kill-timeout S

kill session on input timeout after S seconds

--warn-before-kill S

warn S seconds before killing (see --kill-timeout)

-C, --no-cheatcodes

disable cheat-codes (see below), this is the default

-c, --cheatcodes

enable cheat-codes (see below)

-p, --no-openpty

don't use openpty() even when it's available

-T, --term MODE

MODE can be either 'never' (never allocate a pseudotty, even if stdin is a tty, and use pipes to handle stdout/stderr instead), 'always' (always allocate a pseudotty, even if stdin is not a tty) or 'auto' (default, allocate a pseudotty if stdin is a tty, uses pipes otherwise)

-v, --verbose

verbose (debug) mode, use twice for more verbosity

-V, --version

show version information

-e, --shell-cmd CMD

enables legacy compatibility mode and specifies the command to be run under the user's $SHELL -c

EXAMPLES¶

Run some shell commands in legacy mode:

ttyrec -e 'for i in a b c; do echo $i; done' outfile.ttyrec

Run some shell commands in normal mode:

ttyrec -f /tmp/normal.ttyrec -- sh -c 'for i in a b c; do echo $i; done'

Connect to a remote machine interactively:

ttyrec -t 60 -k 300 -- ssh remoteserver

Execute a local script remotely with the default remote shell:

ttyrec -- ssh remoteserver < script.sh

Record a screen session:

ttyrec screen

FOOTNOTES¶