A Basic Understanding Of screen On Centos | CentOS Help

A Basic Understanding Of screen On Centos | CentOS Help

A Basic Understanding Of screen On Centos

Screen allows you to run scripts or commands in their own virtual window within the terminal, essentially allowing you to have a terminal multi-tasking environment where you can switch between your windows or another users at will. This howto will give you the basics of screen plus some other useful features that may help you in your daily administration tasks. This howto is intended to get you up and running with basic screen functionality within just a few minutes. Please read the manpage for a far more in-depth description of features and options.

Applicable to Centos Versions:

• Centos 5.x

Requirements

Explanation of requirements.

1. Root or appropriate sudo access to the system.

Doing the Work

Basic description of what will be done and what is expected.

1. Install screen if it’s not already installed:

yum install screen

2. Setup screen for multi-user mode:

Multi-user mode is helpful for teaching something in realtime because multi-user mode allows 1 or more people observe another performing commands
or other system maintenance, or it could allow more than one user access to the status of scripts or custom commands running in separate screens.

setuid the screen binary:
chmod u+s /usr/bin/screen

Edit /etc/screenrc and add this at the top:
###Multi-user Mode###
multiuser on
acladd username
aclchg username
acldel username
###End Multi-user Mode###

3. Useful screen commands:

List a particular users screen sessions:
screen -list username/ (the forward slash is important)

List your own active screen sessions:
screen -ls

Re-attach to a specific users screen and session:
screen -x username/shared-session

Start a screen session and give it a unique name:
screen -S somename

Detach from a running screen session leaving it running in the background:
Hit the key combination: Control + A/a + D/d (not case sensitive)

Re-attach to a specific screen you've named:
screen -R somename

Power detach a screen that you are logged into from another location:
This is helpful if you've been accidentally disconnected from ssh while in a remote screen session and it's still attached.
screen -D somename