I wanted to know if there was some means of keeping track of every command executed on command line in a chronological manner along with the working directory where it was executed and the output of the command. Like putting all of this information for a session into a log file that you can go through later.
The acct program allows the system administrators to know exactly what their users were doing on their command line.
This site: http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/howto-log-user-activity-using-process-accounting.html has a detailed description on how to enable it.
Related
I am writing a program that handles some data on a server. Throughout the program, many files are made and sent as input into other programs. To do this, I usually make the command string, then run it like so:
cmd = "prog input_file1 input_file2 > outputfile"
os.system(cmd)
When I run the command, however, the programs being called report that they cannot open the files. If I run the python code on my local computer, it is fine. When I loaded it onto the server, it started to fail. I think this is related to issues with permissions, but am not sure how I can fix this. Many of the files, particularly the output files, are being created at run time. The input files have full permissions for all users. Any help or advice would be appreciated!
Cheers!
The python code you list is simple and correct, so the problem is likely not in the two lines of your example. Here are some related areas for you to check out.
Permissions
The user running the python script must have the appropriate permission (read, write, execute). I see from comments that you've already checked this.
What command are you running
If the command is literally typed into your source code like in the example, then you know what command is being run, but if you are generating any part of it (eg. the list of operands, the name of the output file, other parameters, etc), make sure there are no bugs in the portions of your code that generate the command. For example before the call to os.system(cmd) consider including a line like print("About to execute: " + cmd) so you can see exactly what will be run.
Directly invoke the command
If all the above looks good, try to execute the command directly at a terminal on your server. What output do you get then. It's possible that the problem is with the underlying command itself rather than your python code.
so, I'm solid on linux basics, and have never written a shell script. But there is something I would like to get, or do.
Would it be possible to have linux log ALL COMMANDS I EVER TYPE in a single file? I.e., every ls -l and cd /this/folder etc., but also the install records I have done and more.
If this file exists great. If there is a persistent file created for EACH session and user, then maybe I can write a script to conjoin the lines. Or, what other options are available?
I'd like the file to have 3 columns, user executing, datetime executed, and copy of the command string. Some kind of results or error if returned would be great. MANY THANKS from a guy who is amazed what Linux is capable of doing!
Assuming you're running bash, look at your ~/.bash_history file.
I'm looking for a method to check from within my shell script that script specific completion have been initialized by user using complete -F ...
I want this check to print out an advice on how to initialize the completion like:
Warning: Auto completion is not initialized. Please run : source ....; complete -F ...
The problem is that the script,being run in a sub-shell has no information about "complete" environment of the parent shell where user is working.
So complete -p| grep my-script-name never return any result.
User is expected to run "source" and "complete" commands or add them into his .bashrc manually, because we're working on a server where we have no access to the bash completion system directory.
Alternatively if you know a method of initializing(and not only checking) the auto-complete from within the script, I would happily accept it.
The only way your script can have access to such information for the parent shell is if it is included instead of executed as a sub-shell. Rather than instructing your users they can include some configuration, you can design your script so it works whether it is run or included.
Then you can simply inform your users that if they want completion enabled they need to include your script rather than run it as an executable script (with instuctions to use source or . as you wish).
However, in this case, I would be inclined to either add this information in documentation or add it into a banner which is always displayed (but can be disabled with an option switch like -q), rather than support two modes of running the script (since the gain is so small).
Either you want every user to use bash completion (which I don't think is good, for example I prefer to have it turned off), or let users decide themselves, but having them this message printed out on each TABTAB is a threat, don't you think?
I'd put into /etc/bash.bashrc what you think every user should run.
We have a shell script that expects multiple user inputs to be entered when prompted. e.g
At first it may ask for the operation to be performed. When that answer is given, it may ask for username then password etc. We want to automate this task by providing the inputs using file redirection i.e.
script < input.
The input file will have all the answers for different questions that the script may ask. However it is not working and the shell script is reading only the first line of the input file. What do I need to change or use to make this work?
What you can use is the program expect. You create a script for it that tells it when to give what input to some command it executes. This way you can automate exactly the kind of thing you're struggling with.
More info on Google and here:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3065
man page: http://linux.die.net/man/1/expect
You say 'it only reads the first line of input.'
So you have to kill the script?
Is there any output? (error messages especially)?
Are you redirecting STDERR to /dev/null or else where? If so, remove that.
Here is the hightest probability helper ... Modify the top-level script and add set -vx at the 2nd line. Then you'll be able to see what was processed, where it has stopped and possibly formulate theories about why it is not processing data.
Any chance that the input file was created in a Windows environment and the cr\lf pair is messing up the expected input?
I hope this helps.
Thanks all for commenting and answering. I tried except and that did not work. So I am going to mention what worked for us. Here was our workflow - 1. At the linux prompt, type the command, it was connect() in our case. 2. Once that command is given, the script would ask for parameters for the command like port number, server etc. we had to provide that manually 3. Then we again are presented with a shell prompt with another input. In our case, we were able to provide the first command connect() at the prompt using file redirection, but the parameter passing was an issue. The solution we found was provide the parameters inside the parentheses of connect only i.e. our input file for redirection would contain - connect(). This worked for us.
How could I track changes of specific directory in UNIX? For example, I launch some utility which create some files during its execution. I want to know what exact files were created during one particular launch. Is there any simple way to get such information? Problem is that:
I cannot flush directory content after script execution
Files created with the name that has hash as a compound part. There is no possibility to get this hash from script for subsequent search.
There could be several scripts executed simultaneously, I do not want to see files created by another process in the same folder.
Please notice that I do not want to know whether directory has been changed as stated here, I need filenames which ideally could be grepped to match specific pattern.
You need to subscribe to file system change notifications.
You should use something like FAM, gamin, or inotify to detect when a file has been created, closed, etc.
You could use strace -f myscript to trace all system calls made by the script, and use grep to filter the system calls that create new files.
You could use the Linux Auditing System. Here is a howto link:
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-audit-files-to-see-who-made-changes-to-a-file.html
You can use the script command to track the commands launched.