Intro to Screen

intro-screen

# Using screen to maintain sessions on a remote machine. (This also just works locally).
# ssh into your remote host e.g. ssh user@host
# sets up a screen session called mysession
screen -S mysession
# Exiting the terminal (e.g. shutting your laptop) will "detach" the screen session (i.e. run it in the background).
# To see what screen sessions are running:
screen -ls
# To reconnect
screen -R mysession # resumes a detached session or creates one if it doesn't exist

# Shortcut from localhost for ssh-ing and starting up screen. Consider alias-ing if you use this a lot.
ssh user@host screen -R mysession

# To navigate within screen, the command character is Control-a by default, e.g.
Control-a ? # help page that shows you all available commands
Control-a c # creates a new window within the same session
Control-a a # switches between windows
Control-a d # detach this screen session
exit # exiting will close this screen window

# My ~/.screenrc 
# Change the command character to Control-b so that Control-a still skips to the front of the line
# e.g. Control-b ? is help, Control-b b will switch between windows
escape ^Bb  
startup_message off # Turn off the splash page
defscrollback 30000 # 30000-line scrollback buffer

# Pair programming: http://wiki.networksecuritytoolkit.org/nstwiki/index.php/HowTo_Share_A_Terminal_Session_Using_Screen#Sharing_A_Screen_Session_With_Another_User