How to capture or redirect /dev/tty

[vodhner at cox.net]

After spitting out a bunch of diagnostics to /dev/tty, a program freezes the whole system so that no keyboard or mouse actions have any effect.  How could I capture those diagnostic messages to disk in real time, before the freeze?

I thought I'd use the "screen" command and turn on logging, but "screen" buffers its output to disk so the final 10 lines of warning messages are lost.  I solved that problem, this time, by re-running the test and transcribing those last 10 lines from the frozen screen onto paper.

Is there a way to force /dev/tty to disk, unbuffered?  Could I munge the "controlling terminal" identity so output goes to disk?

Or, is there some way I could open up an ssh from another computer with logging turned on there, and then tell the job it was running from that PTY?

Just curious . . .

Vic