
A guide to GNU Screen - epi0Bauqu
http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/09/27/a-guide-to-gnu-screen/
======
dilap
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.)

~~~
dilap
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.)

~~~
whacked_new
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.

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gojomo
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'? :)

~~~
gleb

      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.

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

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ivan_ah
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...](http://slaptijack.com/system-administration/multiuser-gnu-screen-long-
distance-teaching-tool/)

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

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jm3
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>

~~~
m0nty
"since the buckling spring"

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

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

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makecheck
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.

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far33d
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).

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grendel
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.

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

My biggest complaint is the difficulty using the scrollback buffer.

