Ever wondered if thre is a way to seek help from a remotely logged in user while you are on the shell?? Here is a nice tool that can help you out. It is “kibitz”. We can see an example:
Suppose a number of users are logged into the system. Lets consider the case of a user “helpme” and the root. Suppose helpme wants to see how a particular task is to be done; helpme can seek the help of root. Here is how we use it:
$kibitz root
This will print a message on the root user’s screen, asking the user to type “kibitz” followed by a uniq ID. Once the user accepts the invitation, both will be presented with new screen. Whatever one user types will be visible to the other user, at the same time, enabling the user to view what the other user is typing. The command can also be invoked like:
$kibitz root vi test_kibitz
Once root accepts the invitation, the above command will open the file “test_kibitz”, throug which both the users can emulate a chat session. kibitz makes use of “expect” scripting for its operation. For further details, refer the man page for “kibitz”.
