quick_reference [GNU screen] (original) (raw)
Table of Contents
SCREEN Quick Reference
Getting in
start a new screen session with session name | screen -S |
---|---|
list running sessions/screens | screen -ls |
attach to a running session | screen -x |
attach to session name | screen -r |
the “ultimate attach” | screen -dRR (Attaches to a screen session. If the session is attached elsewhere, detaches that other display. If no session exists, creates one. If multiple sessions exist, uses the first one.) |
Escape key
All screen commands are prefixed by an escape key, by default C-a
(that's Control-a, sometimes written ^a
). To send a literal C-a
to the programs in screen, use C-a a
. This is useful when working with screen within screen. For example C-a a n
will move screen to a new window on the screen within screen.
Getting out
detach | C-a d |
---|---|
detach and logout (quick exit) | C-a D D |
exit screen | C-a \ Exit all of the programs in screen. (not recommended) |
force-exit screen | C-a C-\ (not recommended) |
getting out of the screen session | exit |
Window Management
create new window | C-a c |
---|---|
change to last-visited active window | C-a C-a (commonly used to flip-flop between two windows) |
change to window by number | C-a (only for windows 0 to 9) |
change to window by number or name | C-a ' |
change to next window in list | C-a n or C-a |
change to previous window in list | C-a p or C-a |
see window list | C-a " (allows you to select a window to change to) |
show window bar | C-a w (if you don't have window bar) |
close current window | Close all applications in the current window (including shell) |
kill current window | C-a k (not recommended) |
kill all windows | C-a \ (not recommended) |
rename current window | C-a A |
Split screen
split display horizontally | C-a S |
---|---|
split display vertically | C-a | (or C-a V for the vanilla vertical screen patch) |
jump to next display region | C-a tab |
remove current region | C-a X |
remove all regions but the current one | C-a Q |
Clipboard and Navigation
Help
See help | C-a ? (lists keybindings) |
---|
The man page is the complete reference.
Scripting
To any session name,
send a command to a named session | screen -S -X |
---|---|
create a new window and run ping example.com | screen -S -X screen ping example.com |
stuff characters into the input bufferusing bash to expand a newline character(from here) | screen -S <name> [-p <page>] -X stuff $'quit\r' |
A full example:
run bash within screen
screen -AmdS bash_shell bash
run top within that bash session
screen -S bash_shell -p 0 -X stuff $'top\r'
... some time later
stuff 'q' to tell top to quit
screen -S bash_shell -X stuff 'q'
stuff 'exit\n' to exit bash session
screen -S bash_shell -X stuff $'exit\r'
Misc
redraw window | C-a C-l |
---|---|
monitor window for activity | C-a M |
monitor window for silence | C-a _ |
enter digraph (for producing non-ASCII characters) | C-a C-v |
lock (password protect) session | C-a x |
enter screen command | C-a : |
enable logging in the screen session | C-a H |
In copy mode, one can navigate the scrollback buffer in various ways:
| half page up | C-u | | half page down | C-d | | ------------------------- | ------- | | -------------- | --- | | back | C-b | | forward | C-f | | cursor left/down/up/right | h/j/k/l | | | |