Console screen

xy16644 · #1 August 3rd, 2012, 21:59

I have noticed that when I sit at the console of my server (which is very rare) I have noticed that there is plenty of output on the screen about people logging in remotely (via SSH) and a few other lines of info that appear.

Is it possible to turn ALL of this output off on the console so that when someone looks at the screen ALL they see is the login prompt?

**wblock@** · #2 August 4th, 2012, 00:28

Press alt-f2.

jmccue · #3 August 4th, 2012, 14:10

syslog.conf or
$ man syslog.conf
see /dev/console

John

xy16644 · #4 August 11th, 2012, 15:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmccue

syslog.conf or
$ man syslog.conf
see /dev/console

John

I think thats what I was looking for. I ended up commenting out:

Code:

#*.err;kern.warning;auth.notice;mail.crit               /dev/console

in the /etc/syslog.conf and restarted the service:

Code:

/etc/rc.d/syslogd restart

I'll monitor it to see if it does the trick! Thanks!

**phoenix** · #5 August 11th, 2012, 21:21

if you do that, you should also uncomment the line for /var/log/console.log, so you don't miss anything important.

xy16644 · #6 August 11th, 2012, 21:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by phoenix

if you do that, you should also uncomment the line for /var/log/console.log, so you don't miss anything important.

Thanks for that. I funny enough did uncomment it as follows:

Code:

console.info                                    /var/log/console.log

But my /var/log/console.log is not showing any new entries even after I have logged on a few times since making this change. Is this due to me commenting out the console line?

I would like to log this activity but I don't want anything to appear on the console screen.

**phoenix** · #7 August 14th, 2012, 03:51

Did you restart syslog after editing the file?
# service syslog reload

(might be restart instead of reload)

izotov · #8 August 14th, 2012, 07:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by xy16644

But my /var/log/console.log is not showing any new entries even after I have logged on a few times since making this change.

If the same message appears several times one after the other only then syslog(3) waits till the last event occurs, prints one message only and a line saying something similar to "the last message repeated x times".
If the login event was the only that should have been written to your log file then the same might happen to you.
Try playing with logger(1) to test syslog(3) settings. And always send a message different from the previous.

xy16644 · #9 August 14th, 2012, 08:06

Thanks all!

What I ended up doing in/etc/syslog.conf was commenting out:

Code:

#*.err;kern.warning;auth.notice;mail.crit               /dev/console

and the copying the above line to a new line and changing it to:

Code:

*.err;kern.*;authpriv.none;mail.crit             /dev/console

I then added :

Code:

auth.notice                                     /var/log/console.log

and made sure this was uncommented:

Code:

console.info                                    /var/log/console.log

and restarted the service:

Code:

/etc/rc.d/syslogd restart

Now when I am sitting at the console the *only* thing I can see on the screen (currently) is the login prompt and my server name. This is exactly what I wanted. Its clean and more secure as its not displaying who is logging on remotely and what their usernames are.

I am curious to know if you can remove the server s hostname from the login prompt? That would be very nice if that was possible!

izotov · #10 August 14th, 2012, 11:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by xy16644

I am curious to know if you can remove the server s hostname from the login prompt? That would be very nice if that was possible!

It might be possible. This thread may help you suggesting using gettytab(5).

xy16644 · #11 August 14th, 2012, 21:21

Aaaah thanks for the link to that thread. I think if I remove "%h" from my /etc/gettytab file it will remove the hostname.

Once this change is made, is there a service that you need to restart for the change to take effect? Or is a reboot required?

izotov · #12 August 15th, 2012, 11:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by xy16644

Once this change is made, is there a service that you need to restart for the change to take effect? Or is a reboot required?

My gess is that already running terminals will display according to the old configuration, so they need a restart. I think an escape to single user mode and come back to multiuser would be enough (this is faster than a reboot but take care: network connections are lost, users are thrown out):
# shutdown now
Hit enter when it asks for the shell path. Now you are in single user mode. Go back to multiuser.
# exit

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