How to automatically record all your terminal sessions with script utility

Question

What I want to achieve is be able to record my terminal sessions to file automatically whenever I use Yakuake/Konsole.

It's easy to achieve if at the start of my session I do:

script -f /home/$USER/bin/shell_logs/$(date +"%d-%b-%y_%H-%M-%S")_shell.log

But I want to run the above automatically whenever I start Yakuake or open a new tab.

Using .bashrc does not work because it creates endless loop as 'script' opens a new session, which in turn reads .bashrc and starts another 'script' and so on.

So presumably I need to script Yakuake/Konsole somehow to run 'script' once as a new tab gets opened. The question is how?

Answer 1

I figured it out myself :)

So if someone wants to record their terminal sessions automatically (including SSH sessions(!)) using script utility here is how:

Add the following line at the end of /etc/bash.bashrc file (or to .bashrc in your home if you only want your own sessions to be recorded):

test "$(ps -ocommand= -p $PPID | awk '{print $1}')" == 'script' || (script -f $HOME/$(date +"%d-%b-%y_%H-%M-%S")_shell.log)

(we test for shell's parent process not being script and then run script)

That's all! (assuming you have script installed, of course - script is part of bsdutils package) Now when you open new terminal you'll see:

Script started, file is /home/username/file_name.log

script will write your sessions to a file in your home directory naming them something like *30-Nov-11_00-11-12_shell.log*. Adjust this part to suit yourself - for example, you can append your sessions to one large file rather than creating a new one for every session with script -a /path/to/single_log_file; or you can adjust where the files are written to - say, to /var/log/script/$USER_$(date +"%d-%b-%y_%H-%M-%S")_shell.log (make sure you've actually created /var/log/script and made it writable by others).