Record and replay shell sessions using script(1) and scriptreplay(1)

record.sh

#! /bin/sh

#  Record - record shell session using script(1)
#  Copyright (C) 2011 Matous J. Fialka, <http://mjf.cz/>
#  Released under the terms of The MIT License

RECORD_PATH="$HOME/.typescripts/%Y/%m/%d"
RECORD_FILE='%H%M%S'
RECORD_TIMING_FILE="$RECORD_FILE.timing"

if ! RECORD_PATH=`
	date "+$RECORD_PATH" 2>/dev/null
	`
then
	echo 'Error: invalid typescript path specified.' 1>&2
	exit 1
fi

if ! mkdir -p "$RECORD_PATH" 2>/dev/null
then
	echo "Error: could not create typescript path $RECORD_PATH." 1>&2
	exit 1
fi

if ! RECORD_FILE=`
	date "+$RECORD_FILE" 2>/dev/null
	`
then
	echo 'Error: invalid typescript file specified.' 1>&2
	exit 1
fi

if [ -f "$RECORD_FILE" ]
then
	echo "Error: typescript file $RECORD_FILE exists." 1>&2
	exit 1
fi

if ! RECORD_TIMING_FILE=`
	date "+$RECORD_TIMING_FILE" 2>/dev/null
	`
then
	echo Error: invalid typescript timing file specified. 1>&2
	exit 1
fi


if [ -f "$RECORD_TIMING_FILE" ]
then
	echo "Error: typescript timing file $RECORD_TIMING_FILE exists." 1>&2
	exit 1
fi

RECORD_FILE="$RECORD_PATH/$RECORD_FILE"
RECORD_TIMING_FILE="$RECORD_PATH/$RECORD_TIMING_FILE"

if ! script -c "$*" -t "$RECORD_FILE" 2>"$RECORD_TIMING_FILE"
then
	echo "Error: could not record data." 1>&2

	rm -f "$RECORD_FILE"
	rm -f "$RECORD_TIMING_FILE"

	exit 1
fi

replay.sh

#! /bin/sh

#  Replay - replay typescript using scriptreplay(1)
#  Copyright (C) 2011 Matous J. Fialka, <http://mjf.cz/>
#  Released under the terms of The MIT License

if [ $# -eq 0 ]
then
	echo "Usage: replay TYPESCRIPT [-c] [DIVISOR]" 1>&2
	exit 1
fi

RECORD_FILE="$1"
RECORD_TIMING_FILE="$RECORD_FILE.timing"

shift

if [ "$1" = '-c' ]
then
	shift

	if ! TEMPORARY_FILE=`mktemp 2>/dev/null`
	then
		echo "Error: could not create temporary file." 1>&2
		exit 1
	fi

	if ! awk '

		{ printf "%f %d\n", (($1 - last) > 1) ? 1 : $1, $2 }

	' "$RECORD_TIMING_FILE" >"$TEMPORARY_FILE" 2>/dev/null

	then
		echo "Error: could not condense data, sorry." 1>&2

		rm -f "$TEMPORARY_FILE"

		exit 1
	fi

	RECORD_TIMING_FILE="$TEMPORARY_FILE"
fi

if ! [ -f "$RECORD_FILE" ]
then
	echo "Error: typescript file $RECORD_FILE not found." 1>&2
	exit 1
fi

if ! [ -f "$RECORD_TIMING_FILE" ]
then
	echo "Error: typescript timing file not found." 1>&2
	exit 1
fi

if ! scriptreplay "$RECORD_TIMING_FILE" "$RECORD_FILE" $1 2>/dev/null
then
	echo "Error: could not replay data." 1>&2
	exit 1
else
	echo
fi

rm -f "$TEMPORARY_FILE"

I have to record/replay my terminal sessions sometimes. I used to use script(1) to record and scriptreplay(1) to replay the sessions but the use of the tools was quite painful. Thus I managed to write these two simple wrappers to make the job much easier. The usage is as simple as follows:

$ record.sh /bin/sh
Script started, file is /home/mjf/.typescripts/2011/11/09/223353
...
Script done, file is /home/mjf/.typescripts/2011/11/09/223353

Now I can very simply replay the recorded data:

$ replay /home/mjf/.typescripts/2011/11/09/223353
...

Easy enough now. I also added -c option to the replay script which means "condense data". Any pause longer than one second is condensed to exactly one second. You know that - doing some work and your phone is ringing... uff. There is no simple way to rewind while using the scriptreplay(1) so I managed to simply squeeze the timing data in such cases. It works as charm.

$ replay /home/mjf/.typescripts/2011/11/09/223353 -c
...

You can also speed up the replay the same way as you did in case you used the scripreplay(1) tool itself.
Just add divisor as the second (or in case of -c the third) argument.

$ replay /home/mjf/.typescripts/2011/11/09/223353 10
...

Recording terminal sessions not only is helpful for your reference or as a memo but you can easily build very comprehensive tutorials using the method.

Keep it simple! I hope it helps. Enjoy!

Useful alias:

replaylast='replay `ls -1 /home/mjf/.typescripts/*/*/*/* |tail -3 |head -1`'