Using screen to Protect Your Process

Screen: a Good Habit

Screen is a deprecated utility. Please consider using tmux instead.

When you connect to a remote server via ssh in order to do some work on it, what should be your first command?

It should be to start a screen session:

screen

This opens a new screen session and changes your connection from being vulnerable to network failure to being protected against it.

Detaching from Your Screen

After starting screen, you can start your long-running job. Then, leave your screen session running with your job running inside it by detaching from your screen session. Screen commands start with control-a and then another letter. Control-a and then the "d" key detaches:

Ctrl-a d

screen  
[detached from 13335.pts-9.biocrunch]

Now you can close your ssh session (or the network can go down) and go home.

Reattaching to Your Screen Session

Log back into the server via ssh. Reattach to your screen session by typing

screen -r

Poof! You are right back inside your screen session.

Scrolling in your Screen Session

If you try to scroll back in your session, you'll notice it doesn't work. First, use ctrl+a, escape - you can then scroll in your session. Use the escape key to return back to the command prompt

Changing up your Screen configuration

There are quite a few changes that you can make to the screen configuration. The configuration file is /home//.screenrc

Here is an example .screenrc configuration file similar to the one that I use on a regular basis. Just copy the text and paste it into your favorite editor.

# example .screenrc


# Turn off the startup message
startup_message off

# Always use a logon shell
shell -$SHELL

# Never turn this off!!! If you close your session, it will autodetach and not close.
autodetach on

# allows you to keep what was displayed on your terminal when exiting things like man, less rather than having your terminal cleared
altscreen on

# Cleaner shell title
shelltitle ''

# Show sessions in utmp
deflogin on

# We always want to use bash, but this could be changed if you want...
defshell bash

# Enable scrollback to hold 102k lines
defscrollback 102400

# Set default to UTF-8
defutf8 on

# Uncomment this to see fun messages on the screen rather than the default screen messages.
# nethack on

# Bells and Whistles. This will make the bar at the bottom flash when something happens.
vbell on
vbell_msg "   !! Something interesting has happened !!   "
activity "%c activity -> %n%f %t"
bell "%c bell -> %n%f %t^G"

# Deal with flaky ssh connections better
# defnonblock on

# Message wait time
# msgwait 3

# Password protect shell
password WVrhdlfqa1N66

# TermCap
termcapinfo xterm*|rxvt*|kterm*|Eterm* hs:ts=\E]0;:fs=\007:ds=\E]0;\007
termcapinfo xterm*|linux*|rvxt*|Eterm* OP

# Bind some useful keys for changing windows.
# This lets you select the screen to the left and right of the current selection by
# pressing CTRL and the left arrow key.
bindkey "[[1;5D" prev  # change window with ctrl-left
bindkey "[[1;5C" next  # change window with ctrl-right

# Hard status strings. This makes the bottom bar show a "tab list" of available sessions
hardstatus on
hardstatus alwayslastline
hardstatus alwayslastline "%{= kG}[ %{W}%H%{= kG} ]%{=kW}[%{= ck}%-w%{= Bw}%n %t%{-}%+w %-=%{=kW}]%{= kG}[ %{r}%l%{w} ]%{w}[%{r} %d/%m/%y %c.%s %{w}]%{w}"
sorendition "+b kG"

# Set control key to `
# I don't like having the default control set to CTRL-a, so I set it to the "backtick" key
escape ``

# Default Screen.
# Set up a shell on screen 1 and use bash.
screen -t shell 1 bash
select 1

Other Reading

Here's a great tutorial on screen.