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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