TermRecord, record your terminal session in a simple way

about TermRecord

In the next article we are going to take a look at TermRecord. Nowadays Ubuntu users can use different applications to be able to record a terminal session. Gnu / Linux is very flexible, so we can find options of different types. This time we are going to talk about TermRecord and how it will allow us to record the terminal session easily, quickly and without the use of heavy applications.

The terminal is undoubtedly one of the most useful tools in all of Linux. It is the main tool for system administrators and for many programmers. At times, it is convenient to have a record of our activities in the terminal. To achieve this, one of the tools that we have at our disposal is this, which has been created using Python and that it will allow us to record our terminal session.

This application can be especially useful when sharing our terminal session. Let's think that in a technology department that needs to contrast some information that is generated in the terminal. In addition, it is also an option to take into account for tutorials in the field of education or training.

General characteristics of TermRecord

It is an application written in Python that records our terminal session. Once finished the recording will export a self-contained HTML output very easy to share.

TermRecord can be installed on many Gnu / Linux and MacOS distributions. It is open source released under the MIT license. Its source code can be found available in your GitHub page.

The application will offer us some controls that will allow us to better enjoy the recorded content. When executing the generated .html file we will find some interactive buttons to pause, play, and speed up or slow down the playback.

Application going to assume that during a captured session, we are not going to resize the terminal window. If we resize the window to larger dimensions, the representation in the HTML may not be well represented. If instead we resize to smaller dimensions, there should be no problem rendering the recording in HTML.

You can try to capture window resize events by adjusting the script, but it is difficult to combine the timing of that event with the timing information recorded by the script. To avoid problems, better not to resize terminal windows during capture.

On his GitHub page we will be able to see one demo section which show the capabilities of TermRecord in a variety of shell sessions.

Install TermRecord

The application depends on Python, so installing it on Ubuntu is not difficult at all. to get started we will need to have PIP installed. If we are using Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint or derivatives, in a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T), we will only have to write the following:

install python pip

sudo apt install python-pip

Then we can install in the same terminal TermRecord using PIP:

install termrecord with pip

sudo pip install TermRecord

How to use TermRecord

For start recording our terminal session, we will use the following command in the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T):

Start terminal session recording

TermRecord -o sesion.html

When we want to finish the recording, in the same terminal we will have to write exit and press Intro. After this, we will only have to open the generated .html file with the web browser to be able to see the recording of our terminal session.

view of generated .html file

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Help

The default values ​​will be appropriate for most users. Specifying just one HTML output file together with the command will allow us to obtain what we are looking for. To be able to see some more complex options we can resort to the help section typing in terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T):

TermRecord Help

TermRecord --help

For more information about how we can work with this application, we can refer to the Use section which can be found on the project's GitHub page.

TermRecord is another good option to record our terminal session, which also detects the size of the terminal window that we are using.


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