PEEK and SPY have a "screen-saver" feature that may be used to allow the watcher to see the initial contents of a user's screen when watching begins. Since VMS does NOT store the screen contents, and since the VMS terminal driver just "throws away" output buffers when its done with them, normally there is no way to see what is currently on a user's screen when one first begins watching. Peek/Spy could, however, be used to take control of the user's screen and keyboard, and then enter a refresh-screen sequence to the active program to tell it to redisplay the screen's current contents. The drawback with this approach is that there are many VMS programs (including DCL and many home-grown menu systems) which do NOT have any screen-refresh command programmed into them, so this technique doesn't ALWAYS work. Thus for version 2.0 and upward of Peek/Spy we have added the capability of saving the screen contents for selected users on your system so one gets a full intial-screen display when one starts watching the user. The way this is done differs for the VAX and the ALPHA.
1 – ALPHA
For the ALPHA screen-saving is done as follows: For each user for whom you wish to save the screen contents, issue the following commands in his LOGIN.COM command file: $ PEEK :== $ PEEK$LOCATION:PEEK_V6 $ PEEK /SAVE_SCREEN These same commands may be added to the SYS$MANAGER:SYLOGIN.COM file instead, if you wish to save the screens for everybody. The /SAVE_SCREEN can also take a /LOG_FILE qualifier to make a log file of everything that is sent to the screen. See the top-level PEEK Subtopic: Commands SAVE_SCREEN.
2 – VAX
For the VAX screen-saving is done as follows: A) Install MultiSessions from the same distribution tape as PEEK was shipped on. See the quick installation sheet for that product or use the following command: $ @SYS$UPDATE:VMSINSTAL MS MSA0: B) Start MultiSessions, using the following command: $ @SYS$SYSDEVICE:[MULTISESSIONS]MS_STARTUP C) For each user for whom you wish to save his screen contents, issue the following commands in his LOGIN.COM command file: $ MS*UTIL :== $ MS$LOCATION:MSUTIL_V5 (or MSUTIL_V4 If you are using VMS version 4) $ MS PEEK_ONLY /OPTIONS=(BROADCAST_REFRESH,ORIG_TERM,NOSTATUS) These same commands may be added to the SYS$MANAGER:SYLOGIN.COM file instead, if you wish to save the screens for everybody. If a user is already using MultiSessions, these steps should be skipped as Peek/Spy will already be able to display his initial screen contents. Note that the PEEK_ONLY mode of starting MultiSessions does NOT allow the user to create extra sessions, or allow him to print his screen. It merely saves his screen for Peek/Spy to display when you first start watching his terminal. PEEK_ONLY may be issued by licensed users of Peek/Spy without having to receive any extra license keys for MultiSessions.