Overview
Let’s say you’re at the command line, and you’re running a long process like a kernel recompile. On some machines, that can take up to an hour. An average user might sit and wait. A clever user might background the job, or use the function keys to open a new TTY login. A screen user, however, has already thought ahead. Had screen been launched first (or automatically – more on that later) that user would just hit the proper key combo to create a new shell. And another, and another, if desired. Each one operates independently of the others and all output will remain on the appropriate screen session.
Some of you who like to use the Alt + Ctrl + (F1 through F4) method may wonder how screen is any better. Several reasons actually, some of which would be:
A LOTS more.
Getting Started
As screen is included in nearly every major Linux distro, this guide will not cover installation. The simplest way to launch screen is to just open a terminal and type You might get a welcome screen, but otherwise you may not notice anything different. It just looks like a normal terminal right?
What you’re actually seeing is the default screen session, and you can think of it as a layer over your shell. Should you exit or detach the session, you’d be returned to your normal screen-less shell.
Adding and Navigating Screens
For starters, you’ll need to know one major key combo. This is the “magic” key combo that lets you access all the individual commands. What is this magical combination? Ctrl + A. For example, Ctrl + A followed by c will create a new screen. Ctrl + A and n will move to the next screen in line (if one exists). The following includes many of the most common action keys (all keys are case-sensitive):
c – Create a new screen n – Move to next screen p – Move to previous screen S – Split screen into stacked regions | – Split to side-by-side regions (might not work on all systems) d – Detach screen A – Set screen title
Attaching/Detaching Screens
While there are many great uses for screen, this function could be called screen’s bread and butter. The ability to detach a screen, leaving it running, and pick it back up later is invaluable.
Let’s say you’re running the Minecraft server from last week, and it’s running on an old PC under your bed. Normally if you wanted to, say, enter commands at the server console, you’d have to pull out the machine, dig out a keyboard and monitor, run your commands, and push it all back. Had the server software been started in a screen session, you can just SSH into the server, re-attach the screen, and do what you need. When done, detach the screen, and the server will keep running even after you close the SSH session. Days/weeks/months later, you can log back into the server and reattach that screen to enter new commands.
.screenrc
Finally, we could not cover screen without at least a brief mention of the “~/.screenrc” file. There are many many uses for this file, but as this is an introductory guide, we will not cover all possible options. Instead, we’ll just point out the well-loved hardstatus setting.
This option gives you a fantastically useful info bar that will persist across all screen sessions. Typically, it’s placed at the bottom and holds info such as time, hostname, and title/number of the current screen.
You can find example hardstatus codes all over the net with your preferred search engine, but here are a few to get you started.
