[H-GEN] VNC for console apps??

[Russell Stuart]

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On Fri, 2003-05-16 at 11:42, Paul Gearon wrote: 
> I'm not sure that I can see why you'd want to send keystrokes to the
> console (other than things like the Alt-SysRq combinations, but again you
> want to be at the console for this).  If you really had to send keystrokes
> to a console, then use ssh to connect, and have it XForward a console
> window back to you.  The messages you've missed should be in the above
> mentioned places.
> 
> If there's something that you really need that ISN'T covered by the above,
> then I'd be curious to hear about it please...

Perhaps you are thinking these machines are servers.  They are not.  I
obviously did not state my original question very well, as I think I
have managed to confuse most people who responded.  Let me try again.

Think of a Windows machine running MYOB.  Something odd happens, and I
get a phone call.  User says "XYZ has appeared on the screen and I can't
get out of it".  I say, "that's odd - never heard of that before".  It
may be a dialogue MYOB through up.  It may be a dialogue related to
MYOB, like a printer dialogue.  It may be an unrelated dialogue, like a
virus message, a disk failure, or printer error.  Whatever it is, its
going to take me 10 minutes to get a sensible description out of someone
whose sole training consists of balancing a cash drawer.

So I connect to Windows machine using VNC, see what is really happening
with my own eyes, fix problem via VNC (by sending keystrokes and mouse
clicks to MYOB or whatever else has popped up).

Now:
  - Replace Windows with Linux.
  - Replace Windows GUI with a Linux virtual console, ie one of
    /dev/tty1../dev/tty63.  /dev/console points the the current one
    displayed on the monitor.
  - Replace MYOB with a home grown curses (ie text) application.
  - Replace the Windows system dialogue, if that was the problem,
    with a message some background daemon has written to /dev/console,
    and has consequently been sprayed across screen as it interacts with
    the curses app.
  - Replace VNC/PCAnywhere/RemoteAssistance with ?????

I hope is obvious now that I don't what to see just what appears in the
system logs.  Xconsole won't work, as it only displays what is written
to /dev/console, not the currently selected virtual console.  I hope
this also answers Trent's question about wanting to see urgent system
messages.  Yes, I do.  But it is only a one part of the picture.

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