dislocate(1) [redhat man page]
DISLOCATE(1) General Commands Manual DISLOCATE(1) NAME
Dislocate - disconnect and reconnect processes SYNOPSIS
dislocate [ program args... ] INTRODUCTION
Dislocate allows processes to be disconnected and reconnected to the terminal. Possible uses: o You can disconnect a process from a terminal at work and reconnect from home, to continue working. o After having your line be dropped due to noise, you can get back to your process without having to restart it from scratch. o If you have a problem that you would like to show someone, you can set up the scenario at your own terminal, disconnect, walk down the hall, and reconnect on another terminal. o If you are in the middle of a great game (or whatever) that does not allow you to save, and someone else kicks you off the ter- minal, you can disconnect, and reconnect later. USAGE
When run with no arguments, Dislocate tells you about your disconnected processes and lets you reconnect to one. Otherwise, Dislocate runs the named program along with any arguments. By default, ^] is an escape that lets you talk to Dislocate itself. At that point, you can disconnect (by pressing ^D) or suspend Dislo- cate (by pressing ^Z). Any Tcl or Expect command is also acceptable at this point. For example, to insert the contents of a the file /etc/motd as if you had typed it, say: send -i $out [exec cat /etc/motd] To send the numbers 1 to 100 in response to the prompt "next #", say: for {set i 0} {$i<100} {incr i} { expect -i $in "n"xt #" send -i $out "$i } Scripts can also be prepared and sourced in so that you don't have to type them on the spot. Dislocate is actually just a simple Expect script. Feel free to make it do what you want it to do or just use Expect directly, without going through Dislocate. Dislocate understands a few special arguments. These should appear before any program name. Each should be sep- arated by whitespace. If the arguments themselves takes arguments, these should also be separated by whitespace. The -escape flag sets the escape to whatever follows. The default escape is ^]. CAVEATS
This program was written by the author as an exercise to show that communicating with disconnected processes is easy. There are many fea- tures that could be added, but that is not the intent of this program. SEE ALSO
Tcl(3), libexpect(3) "Exploring Expect: A Tcl-Based Toolkit for Automating Interactive Programs" by Don Libes, O'Reilly and Associates, January 1995. AUTHOR
Don Libes, National Institute of Standards and Technology 7 October 1993 DISLOCATE(1)
Check Out this Related Man Page
XKIBITZ(1) General Commands Manual XKIBITZ(1) NAME
xkibitz - allow multiple people to interact in an xterm SYNOPSIS
xkibitz [ xkibitz-args ] [ program program-args... ] INTRODUCTION
xkibitz allows users in separate xterms to share one shell (or any program that runs in an xterm). Uses include: o A novice user can ask an expert user for help. Using xkibitz, the expert can see what the user is doing, and offer advice or show how to do it right. o By running xkibitz and then starting a full-screen editor, people may carry out a conversation, retaining the ability to scroll backwards, save the entire conversation, or even edit it while in progress. o People can team up on games, document editing, or other cooperative tasks where each person has strengths and weaknesses that complement one another. o If you want to have a large number of people do an on-line code walk-through, you can sit two in front of each workstation, and then connect them all together while you everyone looks at code together in the editor. USAGE
To start xkibitz, one user (the master) runs xkibitz with no arguments. xkibitz starts a new shell (or another program, if given on the command line). The user can interact normally with the shell, or upon entering an escape (described when xkibitz starts) can add users to the interaction. To add users, enter "+ display" where display is the X display name. If there is no ":X.Y" in the display name, ":0.0" is assumed. The master user must have permission to access each display. Each display is assigned a tag - a small integer which can be used to reference the display. To show the current tags and displays, enter "=". To drop a display, enter "- tag" where tag is the display's tag according to the "=" command. To return to the shared shell, enter "return". Then the keystrokes of all users become the input of the shell. Similarly, all users receive the output from the shell. To terminate xkibitz it suffices to terminate the shell itself. For example, if any user types ^D (and the shell accepts this to be EOF), the shell terminates followed by xkibitz. Normally, all characters are passed uninterpreted. However, in the escape dialogue the user talks directly to the xkibitz interpreter. Any Expect(1) or Tcl(3) commands may also be given. Also, job control may be used while in the interpreter, to, for example, suspend or restart xkibitz. Various processes can produce various effects. For example, you can emulate a multi-way write(1) session with the command: xkibitz sleep 1000000 ARGUMENTS
xkibitz understands a few special arguments which should appear before the program name (if given). Each argument should be separated by whitespace. If the arguments themselves takes arguments, these should also be separated by whitespace. -escape sets the escape character. The default escape character is ^]. -display adds a display much like the "+" command. Multiple -display flags can be given. For example, to start up xkibitz with three additional displays: xkibitz -display mercury -display fox -display dragon:1.0 CAVEATS
Due to limitations in both X and UNIX, resize propagation is weak. When the master user resizes the xterm, all the other xterms are logically resized. Unfortunately, xkibitz cannot force the physical xterm size to correspond with the logical xterm sizes. The other users are free to resize their xterm but their sizes are not propagated. The master can check the logical sizes with the "=" command. Deducing the window size is a non-portable operation. The code is known to work for recent versions of SunOS, AIX, Unicos, and HPUX. Send back mods if you add support for anything else. ENVIRONMENT
The environment variable SHELL is used to determine and start a shell, if no other program is given on the command line. If the environment variable DISPLAY is defined, its value is used for the display name of the xkibitz master (the display with tag number 0). Otherwise this name remains empty. Additional arguments may be passed to new xterms through the environment variable XKIBITZ_XTERM_ARGS. For example, to create xterms with a scrollbar and a green pointer cursor: XKIBITZ_XTERM_ARGS="-sb -ms green" export XKIBITZ_XTERM_ARGS (this is for the Bourne shell - use whatever syntax is appropriate for your favorite shell). Any option can be given that is valid for the xterm command, with the exception of -display, -geometry and -S as those are set by xkibitz. SEE ALSO
Tcl(3), libexpect(3) kibitz(1) "Exploring Expect: A Tcl-Based Toolkit for Automating Interactive Programs" by Don Libes, O'Reilly and Associates, January 1995. "kibitz - Connecting Multiple Interactive Programs Together", by Don Libes, Software - Practice & Experience, John Wiley & Sons, West Sus- sex, England, Vol. 23, No. 5, May, 1993. AUTHOR
Don Libes, National Institute of Standards and Technology 06 October 1994 XKIBITZ(1)