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Comment by scrapheap | Hacker News Reader

Is this for the virtual consoles (the screens you get to with CTRL+ALT+F1..6)? If so is this for scrolling back to see errors that have been written the console, or for scrolling back once you've logged into the console?

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Yes, for virtual consoles. And yes for scrolling back for errors and other stuff. For example - scrolling back to see previous output (or options from --help) while typing a command.

>>> for scrolling back once you've logged into the console

This, um, might pose security issue so, maybe excluding this?

Ok this is crude and really you would be better of learning to use screen or tmux, but you could always do the following.

  bash | tee /tmp/scrollback

Then login on your second virtual console and run:

  less +F /tmp/scrollback

Now switch back to your first virtual console and start debugging. When you hit a point you want to scroll back then hop over to your second virtual console hit <CTRL>+C to interrupt less from following your file and you can then scroll back through your output. When you've done scrolling back through your history press <SHIFT>+F (i.e. an uppercase F) in less and it'll go back to following the /tmp/scrollback file

It's not how I would work, but there were times where I've had minimal resources to work with on a physical server and this did the job - albeit in a total impractical way. :)

>>>>>> for scrolling back once you've logged into the console

>>>This, um, might pose security issue so, maybe excluding this?

oh, this is wrong and makes no sense, because I was unable to read properly the other day... i've read "once you logged out"

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