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Power Sessions with Screen

Issue 105

From Issue #105
January 2003

Jan 01, 2003  By Adam Lazur
 in
Adam explains the many benefits and uses of screen.
Further Information

You can find further information on screen in the screen documentation. The documentation is provided in both man and info format. I prefer the info format when browsing and the man page when searching for specific things, but that's a personal preference.

There are also a few on-line resources for screen users. First is Sven Guckes' screen pages at www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/screen. Second is the helpful screen mailing list at groups.yahoo.com/group/gnu-screen. The mailing list is the first place you should go with questions after you have exhausted the available documentation. You must be subscribed to post.

Adam Lazur is a Linux consultant doing things ranging from embedded Linux to Beowulf clusters. In his spare time, Adam likes to write about himself in the third person. Adam welcomes comments about this article at adam@lazur.org.

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Re: Changing escape key sequence for screen.

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 02/09/2004 - 03:00.

Far better is to use vi which doesn't require the use of control/meta keys!

Re: Changing escape key sequence for screen.

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 08/25/2003 - 02:00.

C-g is also critical for canceling commands...

Re: Changing escape key sequence for screen.

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 08/25/2003 - 02:00.

Alternatives include:

escape ^Oo (C-o opens a new line in emacs)
escape ^Pp (C-p moves the cursor to the previous line)

Re: Changing escape key sequence for screen.

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 07/07/2004 - 02:00.

Five years ago my screen escape and literal command characters of choice for Emacs noninterference:

escape "^^^^"

Using Ctrl-^ was a bit awkward but I got used to it. If I were using screen as much nowadays I'd probably choose a different character, maybe even a function key.

The first thing I looked for

sqweek's picture
Submitted by sqweek (not verified) on Mon, 08/29/2005 - 04:24.

The first thing I looked for when I started using screen was an option to change the escape key - I didn't fancy having to hit C-a a to move to the start of the line.
After thinking about it for a while, I came up with this:
escape `\'
Which I'm a big fan of. For some reason hitting ` ' to get a backquote just feels intuitive (though it might help that I use dvorak so ' is where q is on qwerty).

Sessions for X

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 12/07/2002 - 03:00.

I love screen. But what I want is something that can do stateful sessions with X programs when my X server crashes. VNC is to slow, and Xmove I couldn't get to work. Any suggestions?

My address is davidmccabe ta myrealbox tod com

if you'd like to contact me about that.

Thanks!

Re: Sessions for X

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 12/08/2002 - 03:00.

have you looked at ratpoison? (http://ratpoison.sourceforge.net)

I thought I remember reading somewhere that you could detach and attach

sessions...but I can't seem to find it documented anywhere now. Anyway,

if you like screen, you might like ratpoison.

Re: Sessions for X

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 12/14/2002 - 03:00.

Yes, I use Ratpoison right now, and no, it doesn't do that.

Re: Sessions for X

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 12/08/2002 - 03:00.

http://palm.freshmeat.net/articles/view/581/

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