splitvt - Online in the Cloud

PROGRAM:

NAME

splitvt - run two shells in a split window

SYNOPSIS

splitvt [options] [shell]

OPTIONS

-upper command
Runs 'command' in the upper window

-lower command
Runs 'command' in the lower window

-bottom
Stats with the focus in the bottom window

-s numlines
Sets 'numlines' to the number of lines in the top window. This number will be
modified if the screen isn't big enough to handle the full size.

-t title
Sets an xterm title bar to 'title'

-login Runs the programs under each window as though they were login shells. This is
useful to have csh source it's .login file, bash source .profile, etc.

-nologin
Ovverrides any "set login on" statement in the startup file.

-rcfile file
Loads 'file' as the startup file instead of ~/.splitvtrc.

-norc Suppresses loading your ~/.splitvtrc

-f Allow setting the height of either the top or the bottom window to less than 3
lines.

-v Print out the version number of splitvt

DESCRIPTION

This program splits the screen into two windows, one above the other, and runs a shell in
each one. The default shell is taken from the SHELL environment variable, or /bin/csh if
SHELL isn't in the environment, but another shell can be specified on the command line.

The top window is the default current window, but you can change to the other by pressing
^W. Pressing ^V will quote the next character to the current shell. Pressing ^O will put
splitvt into command mode.

These special characters (command mode, switch window, and quote next character) can be
modified from within the .splitvtrc file.

When in command mode, splitvt will read one non-numeric character, perform the requested
command, and then revert to normal operations. Numeric characters are interpreted as a
parameter for the specified command. The currently supported commands are:

'h' Print a help window for the escape commands

'-' Shrink the current window

'+' Expand the current window

'c' Select a block of text in the current window

'p' Paste the selected text to the current window

'k' Kill the current window (hangup signal)

'x' Lock the screen, after prompting for password

'r' Repaint the screen (clearing screen garbage)

'q' Quickly quit splitvt, killing the running shells

More functions may be added in the future.

If the -s command line option is used, the upper window will be bound to the user defined
number of lines even if the screen is resized. Otherwise, the screen will be split into
two equal parts based on the new size of the screen.

The environment variable SPLITVT is set in the shells forked by splitvt. In the shell
running in the upper window, this variable is set to the value "upper", while the shell
running in the lower window has this variable set to the value "lower". This is useful in
shell scripts to provide different behavior depending on which window the script is
running in. An example of this is shown in the file "menu" in the examples directory in
the splitvt distribution.

When splitvt starts up, it looks in your home directory for a file named

.splitvtrc You can set a number of parameters from within this file, including all of the
special characters, the default number of lines in the upper window, whether or not to run
the commands as login shells, and even default commands to run in each window.

Here is an example of a .splitvtrc file:

# This is an example .splitvtrc file.
set command_char ^O
set quote_char ^V
set switch_char ^W
set upper_lines 12
run -upper /bin/sh
run -lower top
set login on
# This next line would override the above run statements
#run /bin/tcsh

If programs like vi are doing strange things to the window while in splitvt, you probably
need to set the LINES environment variable to a correct value, or set the terminal's
window sizing correctly. This should be done automatically, but may need to be corrected.

If you are running under an xterm window, the title bar will probably be updated to show
the version of splitvt that you are running. Under a true xterm window, you can also
switch which half of the window you are typing into by clicking the mouse in the half of
the window in which you want to type. You can also drag and drop the separator bar by
pressing down on the mouse button over the separator bar, holding it down, moving the
mouse to where you want the bar to end up, and then releasing the button.

splitvt will attempt to erase the current utmp entry, and replace it with entries for the
two windows. This allows you to use programs such as 'talk' within the splitvt windows.
If you do not have write permission to the /var/run/utmp file, you will not be able to
modify the utmp entries.

splitvt can be made set-uid root. splitvt will reset its user id to that of the person
running it, just before it exec()'s the shell under the window. The splitvt process
remains with root permissions, and will change ownership of the pseudo terminals to that
of the person running splitvt, and then reset it to root when the window is closed.

SPLITVT IS NOT GUARANTEED TO BE A SAFE SET-UID PROGRAM!

I have done all I know to keep splitvt a safely usable set-uid program, but I do not know
everything, and am not responsible for any security weaknesses splitvt might posess.

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