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OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/26325/Linux_Screen_tutorial_and_how-to Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Sat, 25 May 2013 22:22:10 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Comment by Sodki http://www.osnews.com/thread?533340 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533340 I swear by it. It's a _really_ powerful tool and easy to use if you just want basic functionality. Thu, 30 Aug 2012 23:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sodki) Comments Personally, I like tmux better. http://www.osnews.com/thread?533343 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533343 But they are both awesome tools. I always recommend them to people new to cli. Thu, 30 Aug 2012 23:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (beowuff) Comments tmux http://www.osnews.com/thread?533344 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533344 If you like screen you might want to have a look at tmux. It's like screen only with a modern design and actively maintained. I find it to work much better in general. Thu, 30 Aug 2012 23:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Soulbender) Comments Screen Mandatory Rails Tool http://www.osnews.com/thread?533347 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533347 As a rails developer screen is a mandatory part of my toolkit. My only complaint is that I cannot seem to name the screens, so I have to remember which number is the server, console, vi session, etc... Does tmux have naming? Thu, 30 Aug 2012 23:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jburnett) Comments RE: Screen Mandatory Rails Tool http://www.osnews.com/thread?533348 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533348 Yes!

From http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=tmux&sektion=1

, Rename the current window. Thu, 30 Aug 2012 23:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (beowuff) Comments RE: Screen Mandatory Rails Tool http://www.osnews.com/thread?533350 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533350

Does tmux have naming?

Yes, it does but tmux also shows the current command next to each window number in the status bar. Thu, 30 Aug 2012 23:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Soulbender) Comments This is the kind of thing that pisses RMS off http://www.osnews.com/thread?533353 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533353 Yes, RMS has tired everyone out by arguing that people could say GNU/Linux, but come on. It's not the Linux screen tool.

It is GNU Screen, originally done on the BSD platform and integrated with the GNU project in 1990, before Linus released his first kernel. People have been using it for more than two decades on all kinds of Unix flavors, as well as on Windows and OSX.

Linux is great, but it's just a kernel, and that kernel was designed originally to run all the cool GNU and BSD code that already existed. Fri, 31 Aug 2012 00:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JoeBuck) Comments RE: Screen Mandatory Rails Tool http://www.osnews.com/thread?533355 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533355 screen can already do what you want. Enter C-a A to give the current window a name. Enter C-a ' (quote) to prompt for a window name to switch to. Enter C-a " (double quote) to list all the screen names/numbers. Fri, 31 Aug 2012 00:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JoeBuck) Comments RE: Personally, I like tmux better. http://www.osnews.com/thread?533361 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533361 tmux really is better... I've used it extensively to keep the sessions on my sparcstation open even if the ssh connection craps out.

It would be nice if it were a bit more integrated into ssh so that it could resume connections automatic ie when on a cellular or intermittent wifi connection.

The keyboard usage on tmux seems a bit more polished to me I suppose thats the main thing.Edited 2012-08-31 01:03 UTC Fri, 31 Aug 2012 01:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cb88) Comments Used it all the time for admin tasks http://www.osnews.com/thread?533370 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533370 Excellent tool. As a sysadm, I used to use this all the time for remote connections, esp. for night work. These days connection reliability is so improved it's not the issue it once was. Fri, 31 Aug 2012 01:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (benali72) Comments RE: This is the kind of thing that pisses RMS off http://www.osnews.com/thread?533373 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533373

Yes, RMS has tired everyone out by arguing that people could say GNU/Linux, but come on. It's not the Linux screen tool.

If that kind of thing pisses you off, you probably need to get out more. Seriously. Especially if you didn't even write the f**king thing. Fri, 31 Aug 2012 01:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (WorknMan) Comments RE[2]: Personally, I like tmux better. http://www.osnews.com/thread?533374 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533374 I do this with screen, but I'm sure the same thing would probably work with tmux. Here's how, http://taint.org/wk/RemoteLoginAutoScreen

edit:
Someone already seems to have modified the above to work with tmux, http://william.shallum.net/random-notes/automatically-start-tmux-on... Edited 2012-08-31 02:11 UTC Fri, 31 Aug 2012 01:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (broken_symlink) Comments Screen... http://www.osnews.com/thread?533381 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533381 As far as I've seen, the primary use of Screen is to run TinyFugue while you're at work. Fri, 31 Aug 2012 02:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Almafeta) Comments I prefer tmux http://www.osnews.com/thread?533383 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533383 I switched from GNU Screen to tmux a few years back because I use vertical splits quite a lot and Screen didn't have that feature built in yet.

The first two things that I install on a new server are tmux and Vim. Fri, 31 Aug 2012 02:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Shane) Comments RE: Screen... http://www.osnews.com/thread?533385 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533385 12 or so years ago, I got introduced to Screen because I wanted to leave my nickname connected to IRC 24/7. Screened BitchX sessions, Eggdrop bots, riding netsplits to wage channel wars. Fun days. Fri, 31 Aug 2012 02:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Shane) Comments RE: I prefer tmux http://www.osnews.com/thread?533388 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533388 Same for me, basically. Switched to tmux after years with screen. Was much easier to get into; partly due to prior experience with screen, mostly because it had clear documentation and didn't require me to be fluent in Klingon to configure it. Fri, 31 Aug 2012 03:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gan17) Comments RE: I prefer tmux http://www.osnews.com/thread?533392 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533392 Another vote for tmux as well. Fri, 31 Aug 2012 04:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (diegoviola) Comments RE: Used it all the time for admin tasks http://www.osnews.com/thread?533393 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533393 Actually, it is more a problem now than it has ever been before (maybe except for times of dial-up connections). I tend to work mostly on laptops, and switching between networks, suspending/waking up the machine, or simply losing a wireless connection happens all the time, often on purpose. Generally, relying on a TCP connection for holding the application state is a poor design decision these days.

BTW, this is also the main reason I don't use X for remote work nowadays. It was simply designed for a different use case (a server with fixed terminals). Another reason is that X with its networking performance issues, and without properly configured NFS/NIS, forwarded sound recording/playback, DBUS services, printers, CD-ROMs, card readers etc., is no longer network transparent but it still pretends to be (by mixing up local and remote windows). Fri, 31 Aug 2012 04:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ndrw) Comments RE[2]: This is the kind of thing that pisses RMS off http://www.osnews.com/thread?533396 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533396 No, he's absolutely correct. The name of the software is "GNU screen", not "screen". So while the whole GNU/Linux issue is debatable, calling "GNU screen" "Linux screen" is miss-attribution and wrong. Fri, 31 Aug 2012 05:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Moonbuzz) Comments Comment by MOS6510 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533403 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533403 When I started out on the Internet it was all text and UNIX prompts for me. So when I discovered screen it was great.

TinyFugue
Pine (private)
Pine (work)
Tin
ircii
& a couple of shells to different servers.

My 'screen' ran at work, but as it was such a great tool more and more coworkers started using it causing system admins to get annoyed and we had to move server a few times. If you didn't a kill script would kill you (well, your screen session). Fri, 31 Aug 2012 06:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (MOS6510) Comments RE[2]: This is the kind of thing that pisses RMS off http://www.osnews.com/thread?533409 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533409

If that kind of thing pisses you off, you probably need to get out more. Seriously. Especially if you didn't even write the f**king thing.

Pardon me for the intrusion, but from were I stand it would appear that you are the one who's pissed off?

The O.P. is right and I was disappointed to see that, at least initially, he had been modded down just for putting things into perspective. And yes, I used (or rather, had to use) "screen" in the very early 90s... on SCO UNIX, no less! ;-)

Oh, and "screen" was great for TIA, aka The Internet Adapter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internet_Adapter). Anyone remember that?

RT.Edited 2012-08-31 07:48 UTC Fri, 31 Aug 2012 07:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (karunko) Comments RE: tmux http://www.osnews.com/thread?533410 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533410 I'm another Tmux user as well.

Used to run GNU Screen heavily, then discovered Tmux and never looked back. Fri, 31 Aug 2012 07:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Laurence) Comments .screenrc http://www.osnews.com/thread?533434 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533434 hardstatus alwayslastline
hardstatus string '%{gk}[ %{G}%H %{g}][%= %{wk}%?%-Lw%?%{=b kR} (%{W}%n*%f %t%?(%u)%?%{=b kR})%{= kw}%?%+Lw%?%?%= %{g}][%{Y}%l%{g}] %{=b C}[ %m/%d %c ]%{W}'

An then, you are good to go

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 11:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Risthel) Comments Comment by OSbunny http://www.osnews.com/thread?533437 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533437 Isn't screen obsolete now that we have GUIs everywhere? It's much easier to just open a new tab in Konsole (or your favourite terminal app) and make another SSH connection. If you are using Windows you just open up another putty window. Fri, 31 Aug 2012 12:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OSbunny) Comments RE: Comment by OSbunny http://www.osnews.com/thread?533440 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533440

Isn't screen obsolete now that we have GUIs everywhere? It's much easier to just open a new tab in Konsole (or your favourite terminal app) and make another SSH connection. If you are using Windows you just open up another putty window.

Aside from terminals not having support for detaching and re-attaching sessions the way screen and tmux do, my responsive, lightweight terminals of choice (uxterm and urxvt) don't always do tabs.

(urxvt does, but it's basically a Perl script that does textual tabs in a manner inferior to screen or tmux)

Also, terminal tabs are less than ideal if you have to open a new SSH connection every time you Ctrl+Shift+T rather than just running screen on the remote system and doing Ctrl+a c. Fri, 31 Aug 2012 12:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ssokolow) Comments RE: Comment by OSbunny http://www.osnews.com/thread?533459 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533459

Isn't screen obsolete now that we have GUIs everywhere?

No.

It's much easier to just open a new tab in Konsole (or your favourite terminal app) and make another SSH connection.

Pressing Ctrl-b+c is a lot quicker and easier than opening a new tab and making a new connection. Not to mention that the screen/tmux session survives disconnects. Fri, 31 Aug 2012 14:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Soulbender) Comments Is mosh not an option here? http://www.osnews.com/thread?533461 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533461 I hear it's pretty good. Fri, 31 Aug 2012 15:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Gaius_Maximus) Comments Less-than-three screen http://www.osnews.com/thread?533499 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533499 Started using screen after an OSNews article/link a few years ago, now I find it absolutely indispensable. Though it can get a bit disorienting sometimes, especially when working via remote desktop session running PuttyCM, with 3 or 4 tabs/connections open, each with at least 2 or 3 screens open.

My favourite trick with screen is using my smartphone to monitor a long-running process (E.g. rsync'ing a few GB of data from one server to another). I just start the process in a screen session via my desktop/laptop, then connect to the same account through SSH, and use "screen -x [session id]" to connect to the same session. The same strategy also works well for doing remote support/training via SSH (and much easier to setup that most desktop-sharing solutions I've used). Fri, 31 Aug 2012 20:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (StephenBeDoper) Comments Comment by marcp http://www.osnews.com/thread?533500 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533500 I prefer to use TMUX. It's much more responsive, cleaner and generally better. Screen is kinda sluggish and old. Fri, 31 Aug 2012 20:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (marcp) Comments RE[2]: Personally, I like tmux better. http://www.osnews.com/thread?533507 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533507 http://mosh.mit.edu/

That might be exactly what you're looking for. Sat, 01 Sep 2012 02:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tidux) Comments RE: Is mosh not an option here? http://www.osnews.com/thread?533509 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533509 mosh is a replacement for ssh, not for tmux/screen. Well, it's an SSH replacement that, uh, uses SSH to work. Sat, 01 Sep 2012 03:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Soulbender) Comments Byobu, better screen http://www.osnews.com/thread?533580 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533580 I use Byobu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byobu_(software)

Install and try it now, in 5 minutes you'll have forgotten the name ;-).

(copy paste the url, there is an osnews bug where last paren is stripped)Edited 2012-09-02 05:57 UTC Sun, 02 Sep 2012 05:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vivainio) Comments RE: Comment by OSbunny http://www.osnews.com/thread?533603 http://www.osnews.com/thread?533603 Say you run apt/yum from command line, using a konsole tab or putty and suddenly, gasp, you lose connection / your X session dies / SSH dies, etc. Recovery, if possible, will be -very- painful.

I never, never, never, never run anything destructive from a normal command prompt - I always use screen.

- Gilboa Sun, 02 Sep 2012 16:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gilboa) Comments