DECUS Heritage

Version: 5.4b, May 1993
Author: Various
Submitted By: Hunter Goatley, Western Kentucky University
Operating System: OpenVMS VAX
Source Language: MACRO-32, BLISS-32
Keywords: Security, Terminal Management, Utilities - VMS
Memory Requirements: 4.5K Blocks
Notes: Installed with VMSINSTAL. Documentation provided in text, Bookreader, and PostScript formats.
Changes & Improvements: Bug fixes to PHOTO. SUPERVISOR. A hot key interface was added to SUPERVISOR. Several new qualifiers were added to both SUPERVISOR and PHOTO. Miscellaneous bug fixes and enhancements. A vast improvement over the previous submission V5.1-1.
Restrictions: Unable to monitor DECnet RT terminals. Not compatible with SSU, TFF, DEC/Test Manager, and ACMS.

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Abstract: The Supervisor Series is a suite of terminal monitoring utilities that includes SUPERVISOR, PHOTO, and HANDIN. The Supervisor Series was once sold as a commercial product and is now freely available. It is installed using VMSINSTAL; documentation is provided in text, bookreader, and PostScript formats.

Following is a brief summary of highlights:

SUPERVISOR: Allows a suitably-privileged user to monitor an interactive terminal session. When SUPERVISOR is run, every character typed and printed on another user's terminal is displayed on the supervising terminal. SUPERVISOR can operate in OBSERVER mode, where characters are viewed, and ADVISOR mode, where characters can also be typed by the supervising user on behalf of the target user (characters typed are interpreted by VMS as coming from the target terminal.)

Identifiers are used to control access to SUPERVISOR. Depending on the identifiers held by a user, SUPERVISOR can be used in "quiet" mode, where the target user is not notified that he is being supervised. This makes SUPERVISOR an ideal security tool.

SUPERVISOR can also accept canned command sequences prepared from PHOTO log files for execution at the supervised target terminal. This is ideal for simulation testing.

PHOTO: Allows a user to log a terminal session. When PHOTO is enabled, each character sent between VMS and the terminal is recorded in a log file that can be subsequently edited or printed. PHOTO is ideal for documenting product installations, software error messages, etc. PHOTO can create both input-only logs and input/output logs.

HANDIN: A "work-in-progress" variant of PHOTO that creates the log file in a protected directory and automatically queues it to a printer at the end of the session. Designed for use in university environments for producing printouts to be handed in; students cannot edit the files before printing.

Click on DOC to display additional information about the product. Click on FTP to download from the FTP Achives.

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Last Update: Thu Jan 11 18:45:50 1996