Linux – Using Screens

Screens is a very handy tool when working in a terminal. It allows one to do more than one thing at a time with only one window. This is an extremely brief overview of how to use screens, for a more in depth guide check out:

A Guide to Efficiently Using Irssi and Screen – quadpoint.org; and

Linux Screen Tutorial and How To – Rackaid

 

Installation

If you do not already have it, install it using the package manager you currently have installed (yum install screen / apt-get install screen )

..(22:53 $).> yum install screen

 

Running

Starting it up is simple:

..(22:46 $).> screen

 

Common Commands

Commands in screen often follow the ctrl+a [x] style, most commonly used are

Ctrl+a d --> detaches screens and brings you back to your main terminal

Ctrl+a n --> moves to the next screen; and

Ctrl+a c --> creates a new window

 

Reattaching

When detached and at your main terminal window, you can restore your screens with:

..(08:19 $).> screen -raAd

Technically screen -r will work but this one does some more fancy voodoo with resizing and detaching from other sessions currently open.

 

Fixing screens

This is more a note to myself since I infrequently halt my screens, and for the most part the point of this posting here…

Ctrl+a s  or ctrl s --> halts screens (usually by accidental keystrokes)

Ctrl+a q or ctrl q --> starts them back up!

Alternately one can simply add “stty -ixon -ixoff” into their .bashrc profile to turn off flow control and that should take care of it as well.