Bug#886927: ITP: tlog -- Terminal I/O recording and playback package.

[Markus Schade]

Hi Justin,

Am 02.08.21 um 01:08 schrieb Justin St. Marie:
Have you gained any traction packaging tlog?  This package would be very 
helpful to me.


Unfortunately not, but that is not really surprising as Debian has been 
 more or less frozen since March. I would try to find a sponsor again 
after bullseye has been released.


Best regards,
Markus

Bug#886927: ITP: tlog -- Terminal I/O recording and playback package.

[Justin St. Marie]

Hi Markus,

Have you gained any traction packaging tlog?  This package would be very
helpful to me.

Best,
Justin

Bug#886927: ITP: tlog -- Terminal I/O recording and playback package.

[Markus Schade]

Hi,

as there has not been any activity on this in the last two years,
I have taken the liberty to re-assign this bug to myself.

I have started the packaging at:

https://salsa.debian.org/ascii/tlog

An intial package uploaded at mentors:

https://mentors.debian.net/package/tlog/

@Adam:
I know this conflicts with your own termrec package,
but Fedora/RHEL have chosen/created tlog as standard
for session-recording.

That means those who want unified solution across distros
will want or have to use tlog on Debian-based systems as well.


Best regards,
Markus

Bug#886927: ITP: tlog -- Terminal I/O recording and playback package.

[Nikolai Kondrashov]

Hi,

I just released tlog v4:

https://github.com/Scribery/tlog/releases/tag/v4

Perhaps that would help with the decision.

Nick

Bug#886927: ITP: tlog -- Terminal I/O recording and playback package.

[Nikolai Kondrashov]

Hi,

I'm the main developer of tlog.

First of all, thank you for taking this on, Will!

Next, I'll be glad to answer any and all questions about tlog
you might have.

To address what already was mentioned:

The main difference from other recorders is that the primary
use for tlog is logging what's recorded to allow streaming
and centralization using logging infrastructure.

Primary suggested storage for now would be ElasticSearch,
which would allow (limited) searching capability over the recordings.
However, there shouldn't be a problem of using something else.
The JSON schema is documented. BTW, tlog can playback from ElasticSearch
directly.

Yes, we have our own format. I looked through existing recorders
and couldn't find any formats suitable for logging and streaming.

We already support logging to Journal directly, while also adding
a few extra Journal fields to simplify extracting particular
recordings. That is used in the Cockpit UI we're working on
(demo: https://youtu.be/YqNLJhNyqvY?t=6m38s). We need to document
it though.

I'll try to release the next version (v4) in January,
before my talks at DevConf.cz and FOSDEM. I'll also try to do
releases more often.

Issues for the v4 release:
https://github.com/Scribery/tlog/milestone/7

Nick

P.S. I'm a Debian user since "Potato".
 You're doing a great job, guys!

Bug#886927: ITP: tlog -- Terminal I/O recording and playback package.

[Adam Borowski]

On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 08:53:35AM +0100, Andrew Shadura wrote:
> > Yay, yet another incompatible format.
[...]
> > I haven't looked if Asciinema grown a local format when I wasn't looking,
> > either.
> 
> Asciinema does, indeed, have a local format, JSON-based:

Thank you; I haven't watched it closely nor, to be honest, really worked on
my library in the last decade: 0.16 in 2008, 0.17 in 2014, 173 commits
pending but an unanswered "time for a new release" request from Mar 2017...

> {
>   "command": null,
>   "height": 22,
>   "title": "demo",
>   "duration": 37.608602,
>   "stdout": [
> [
>   0.061412,
>   "\u001b]0;\u0007$ "
> ],
> …
> ]
>   ],
>   "version": 1,
>   "width": 80,
>   "env": {
> "SHELL": "/bin/bash",
> "TERM": "xterm-256color"
>   }
> }

Wait, what?  It sends height when it's needed, at the start, but doesn't
send width or format's version until after the whole stream is over?

How are consumers supposed to take it, especially when it's still being
recorded, which is a major use case for tools like this?

This ITP (tlog) for example supports sending the data to syslog -- I don't
think anyone would be interested with having to wait till the end to send
all prior entries in one go.


Meow!
-- 
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ 
⣾⠁⢰⠒⠀⣿⡁ Imagine there are bandits in your house, your kid is bleeding out,
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ the house is on fire, and seven big-ass trumpets are playing in the
⠈⠳⣄ sky.  Your cat demands food.  The priority should be obvious...

Bug#886927: ITP: tlog -- Terminal I/O recording and playback package.

[Andrew Shadura]

On 11 January 2018 at 21:41, Adam Borowski  wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 11:26:23PM +1100, Will Rouesnel wrote:
>> * Package name: tlog
>>   Upstream Author : Nikolai Kondrashov 
>> * URL : http://scribery.github.io/tlog/
>>   Description : Terminal I/O recording and playback package.
>>
>>  tlog is a terminal I/O recording and playback package suitable for
>>  implementing centralized user session recording. At the moment it is not 
>> ready
>>  for production and is to be considered development preview quality.
>>
>>  Whereas most other similar packages write the recorded data to a file in 
>> their
>>  own format, or upload it to a custom server, tlog sends it to a logging
>>  service. The standard syslog interface is supported already, with journald
>>  possibly to come. The recorded data is encoded in JSON in a way which keeps 
>> it
>>  human-readable and searchable as much as possible.
>
> Yay, yet another incompatible format.
>
> For example, my termrec can convert between ttyrec, nh-recorder,
> dosrecorder, RealLogs -- and I bothered to implement only formats that see
> some use in the wild (which excludes eg. script -t, whose two-file
> unhandiness means no one uses it despite coming in an essential package).
> I haven't looked if Asciinema grown a local format when I wasn't looking,
> either.

Asciinema does, indeed, have a local format, JSON-based:

{
  "command": null,
  "height": 22,
  "title": "demo",
  "duration": 37.608602,
  "stdout": [
[
  0.061412,
  "\u001b]0;\u0007$ "
],
…
]
  ],
  "version": 1,
  "width": 80,
  "env": {
"SHELL": "/bin/bash",
"TERM": "xterm-256color"
  }
}

-- 
Cheers,
  Andrew

Bug#886927: ITP: tlog -- Terminal I/O recording and playback package.

[Adam Borowski]

On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 11:26:23PM +1100, Will Rouesnel wrote:
> * Package name: tlog
>   Upstream Author : Nikolai Kondrashov 
> * URL : http://scribery.github.io/tlog/
>   Description : Terminal I/O recording and playback package.
> 
>  tlog is a terminal I/O recording and playback package suitable for
>  implementing centralized user session recording. At the moment it is not 
> ready
>  for production and is to be considered development preview quality.
> 
>  Whereas most other similar packages write the recorded data to a file in 
> their
>  own format, or upload it to a custom server, tlog sends it to a logging
>  service. The standard syslog interface is supported already, with journald
>  possibly to come. The recorded data is encoded in JSON in a way which keeps 
> it
>  human-readable and searchable as much as possible.

Yay, yet another incompatible format.

For example, my termrec can convert between ttyrec, nh-recorder,
dosrecorder, RealLogs -- and I bothered to implement only formats that see
some use in the wild (which excludes eg. script -t, whose two-file
unhandiness means no one uses it despite coming in an essential package).
I haven't looked if Asciinema grown a local format when I wasn't looking,
either.

For example Nethack and Crawl communities have long since standardized on
.ttyrec.bz2 (which means a convenient player must handle compression
transparently).  There's also a bunch of players which can handle ttyrecs:
"ttyrec", termrec, three Perl thingies, ttyplayer, ipbt.

As for remote services, there's termcast, Asciinema and others.


Meow!
-- 
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ 
⣾⠁⢰⠒⠀⣿⡁ Imagine there are bandits in your house, your kid is bleeding out,
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ the house is on fire, and seven big-ass trumpets are playing in the
⠈⠳⣄ sky.  Your cat demands food.  The priority should be obvious...

Bug#886927: ITP: tlog -- Terminal I/O recording and playback package.

[Will Rouesnel]

Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Owner: Will Rouesnel 

* Package name: tlog
  Version : 3
  Upstream Author : Nikolai Kondrashov 
* URL : http://scribery.github.io/tlog/
* License : GPL
  Programming Lang: C
  Description : Terminal I/O recording and playback package.

 tlog is a terminal I/O recording and playback package suitable for
 implementing centralized user session recording. At the moment it is not ready
 for production and is to be considered development preview quality.

 Whereas most other similar packages write the recorded data to a file in their
 own format, or upload it to a custom server, tlog sends it to a logging
 service. The standard syslog interface is supported already, with journald
 possibly to come. The recorded data is encoded in JSON in a way which keeps it
 human-readable and searchable as much as possible.

 - why is this package useful/relevant?
 Fulfills an enormous missing niche in practical systems monitoring and
observation
 on Linux for modern systems.

 - how do you plan to maintain it?
 Packaging is intended to follow upstream closely while the software is in its
 pre-release state. Releases will be automated around CI builds.