Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Using screen to manage your terminal windows

You can use screen if you need to have more than one terminal window open to at the same time.

The advantage of screen is that even if there is an internet problem, you can reattach to the screen where you were working on once your internet is back up.

screen                             Will open a new screen
exit                                  To quit the screen, and go back to the shell
screen -ls                         Display a list of all screens
screen -d screen_name     Detach from screen_name

In Screen, you type Control-a and then you can type in your command. Below are a few common commands.

Ctrl-A :sessionname dev_server    Names the current screen dev_server

Ctrl-A c         Open a new screen
Ctrl-a n          Switch to next screen
Ctrl-a p          Switch to previous screen
Ctrl-a \           Quit and kill all your windows