A guide to GNU Screen | Hacker News Reader

A guide to GNU Screen

redhatmagazine.com

90 pointsepi0Bauqu23 comments

I tend to spend all my time in emacs, and for me the paging stuff and special keystrokes just get in the way -- but the ability to detach from a session and resume it later is awesome. For a program that just does that and otherwise gets out of your way, I recommend checking out dtach:

http://dtach.sourceforge.net/

The two second tutorial:

$ dtach -A /tmp/ek -z emacs # start or resume session identified by /tmp/ek

To detach from the session, type control-backslash. (The -z disables suspend with Control-Z.)

Hmm, I appear to have spread some confusion.

To be clear: dtach implements just one of screen's many features, the ability to detach and resume a session.

If you want all the other stuff that screen does, great! But if you don't then those other things can get in your way, and you might want to give dtach a try.

(E.G., my own personal style is to launch multiple terminals from within emacs, so I don't need screen's multiterminal ability or it's cut and paste, &c.)

I like to run terminals in emacs as well, but every so often I get a segfault when the output is too long on a single line... I have screens doing the terminal handling now.

Screen's better than detach because, for one, you can create multiple terminals in a single screen session, like a tabbed GUI terminal, and then detach and re-attach to them all at once.

I use a .screenrc that provides a textural "toolbar" at the bottom of the terminal so it's easy to see how many you've got running. Configuration is listed on this page: http://bc.tech.coop/blog/060422.html

Screen's default command prefix C-a is not usable with emacs, which sounds like the problem you are having. I run screen with C-] prefix precisely for this reason.

  screen -e^}]

multitty emacs (http://lorentey.hu/project/emacs.html) already allows you to do just that either from a graphical or a vanilla-tty environment.

Not quite. Some things like back-scrolling and multi-mode are still incredibly useful.

IMO, if screen had...

(1) more sensible defaults: key bindings that didn't clash with emacs/bash and an always-visible status line

(2) a more distinctive, search-friendly name

...interest, discussion, and usage would be many multiples higher.

Anyone want to collaborate on a fork called 'zcreen'? :)

  screen -e^}]

Makes screen's commands prefix C-]. That really works very well with Emacs. Since that is command prefix of telnet, all other software avoids it.

Something like:

  hardstatus on
  hardstatus alwayslastline "%{rk}%H %{gk}%c %{yk}%M%d %{wk}%?%-Lw%?%{bw}%n*%f %t%?(%u)%?%{wk}%?%+Lw%?"

in ~/.screenrc gives an always-visible status line.

I've found that using caption lets my shell update the xterm window title.

    caption always
    caption string "..."

I use C-\ for the escape sequence. I'd add:

(3) Easier-to-use shift-pgup/pgdn equivalent

My .screenrc:

  escape ^\\
  hardstatus alwayslastline
  hardstatus string '%{= kG}[ %{G}%H %{g}][%= %{=kw}%?%-Lw%?%{r}(%{W}%n*%f %t%?(%u)%?%{r})%{w}%?%+Lw%?%?%= %{g}][%{B}%Y-%m-%d %{W}%c %{g}]'
  shell /bin/bash
  defflow off
  startup_message off
  defscrollback 1024

'defflow off' lets C-s work. The status line lists the current shells, computer name, time, and date.

So long as we are sharing .screenrcs, this is the way I like my hardstatus string:

  hardstatus string '%{gb}[%{W}%H%{g}] [%= %?%-w%?%{Y}(%{W}%n %t%?(%u)%?%{Y})%{g}%?%+w%= ] [%{W}%D %M %d %c%{g}]'

What is the windows key used for in bash? Could you just use that to begin screen commands?

Hearing about screen back in ~2000 was one of my "holy shit" moments in computing.

Thank you guys for the CTL+] and CTL+\ excape sequences... I had been struggling with CTL+A, I tend to like "go to the beginning of the command line" a lot so this was my main beef with the default sequence.

One of the major uses of screen for me has been teaching. You can have multiple users attach to the same screen -- just follow this guide: http://slaptijack.com/system-administration/multiuser-gnu-sc...

Imagine doing a conference demo and allowing everyone to "attach" to your screen session and watch you code \buzzword using \buzzword :)

screen is the best thing to happen to greenscreens since the buckling spring [1].

and FTW: try "nethack on" in your .screenrc [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckling_spring

[2] http://dotfiles.org/~manoogs/.screenrc

"since the buckling spring"

I am the proud owner of an IBM Model M keyboard. Way superior to modern alternatives.

screen + rtorrent has substantially increased my pirate bay consumption...

The information/example for "hardstatus" in the article is nice. I had only used "screen" briefly, and didn't realize that a constantly-visible status line was possible. The default configuration, which is to display no evidence that "screen" is running, isn't as useful in my opinion.

I run screen in every one of my terminals and it has made me much more efficient. The keystrokes are more natural than tab switching and detaching is great. It's especially nice to label your screens so you can quickly tell the difference between local and remote shells (live vs staging, for instance).

I use ` as my command prefix, works well with emacs and is only one key. the only issue comes if you cut and paste lines with back ticks, which disconnects your screen session, but since its screen its trivial to reattach.

I use ctrl-_ (usually available as ctrl-7, too) for my screen escape.

My biggest complaint is the difficulty using the scrollback buffer.

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