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<h1>Conspy - remote control of Linux virtual consoles</h1>
<p>
Conspy allows a (possibly remote) user to see what is displayed
on a Linux virtual console, and send keystrokes to it. It
works with Linux and FreeBSD, as far as I know.
</p>
<p>
It is rather like VNC, but where VNC takes control of a GUI
conspy takes control of a text mode virtual console. Unlike
VNC, conspy does not require a server to be installed prior
to being used.
</p>
<h2>Documentation</h2>
<p>
Sparse. There is a
<a href="conspy.1.html">man page</a>, and a
<a href="ChangeLog">ChangeLog</a>.
</p>
<h2>Frequently asked question</h2>
<p>
Q: <i>Can conspy look at other types of terminals, such as a normal
serial terminal, or a pty such as a telnet session?</i>
</p>
<p>
A: No. Nor will it ever be able to do so. Conspy does not
intercept the character stream being sent to the virtual
console. If it did that it would have to interpret all the
ANSI escape sequences understood by the Linux virtual console
exactly the same way Linux does. That would be tedious, and
would break each time Linux changes the escape sequences.
Instead conspy asks the Linux kernel for the virtual console's
frame buffer. That is, it gets an image of what is displayed
on the screen and makes your terminal look the same. There is
no way to do that for other tty's. If conspy was to work
with them it would have to interpret the character stream as it
passes through the tty. This is well neigh impossible because
there are many different types of terminal out there and they
all use different escape sequences. If all you all to do it
look at the raw character stream as it passes through the tty
look up ttysnoop on
<a href="http://freshmeat.net/">Freshmeat</a>.
</p>
<h2>Copyright and License</h2>
<p>
Conspy is copyright © 2005,2006,2007,2009 Russell Stuart.
</p>
<p>
This program and the accompanying materials
are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
<a href="http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html">http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html</a>.
</p>
<h2>Downloading</h2>
<p>
Conspy is available in the following formats:
</p>
<table>
<tr>
<td>Source code as a tar ball</td>
<td> </td>
<td<a href="conspy-1.7.tar.gz">conspy-1.7.tar.gz</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Debian Packages</td>
<td> </td>
<td>Conspy is now part of Debian stable.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>RPM binary package</td>
<td> </td>
<td<a href="conspy-1.7-1ras.i386.rpm">conspy-1.7-1ras.i386.rpm</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>RPM source package</td>
<td> </td>
<td<a href="conspy-1.7-1ras.src.rpm">conspy-1.7-1ras.src.rpm</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
The Red Hat binary may not work for you.
If not download the source rpm and rebuild it with:<br/>
<code>rpmbuild --rebuild conspy-X.YY.src.rpm</code><br/>
and installing the resulting binary.
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr>
<p style="margin-left: 0">
Russell Stuart, 2006-Jan-09.
Email:
<a href="mailto:Russell Stuart <russell-conspy@stuart.id.au>">
russell-conspy@<!--@-->stuart.<!--.-->id.<!--.-->au
</a>
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