interceptty 0.6 review

interceptty is a program that sits between a real or fake serial port and an application, and logs everything that passes through it

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 93K Developer: Scott Gifford

0

interceptty is a program that sits between a real or fake serial port and an application, and logs everything that passes through it.

It is designed to let you see exactly what's going to your serial port. It can also act as a logging serial-to-Ethernet client or server.

Requirements:
Some Linux kernel, Solaris kernel, or OpenBSD kernel. It may work with other UNIXes, but I haven't tried it.
A reasonable compiler and C library.

Tested on:
RedHat Linux 6.0
RedHat Linux 7.3 (yes I still use 7.3 in 2004)
Fedora Core 2 Linux
Solaris 2.8
OpenBSD 2.9

Using it:

# ./configure
# make
# make install

What's New in This Release:
Important fixes for running as root systems with /dev/ptmx! Earlier versions screwed up permissions on /dev/ptmx on some systems, making a real mess.

Other features useful for running as root: Can now set permissions on pty, and also chroot and switch UID/GID after opening devices.

If permissions are set on the pty, create a process to monitor interceptty for exit, and when it finishes fix up permissions. This makes sure permissions get reset even if interceptty dies unexpectedly, and also allows us to reset a pty owner even if we've dropped privileges. This isn't necessary on modern systems, but doesn't hurt.