Screen

The screen command is like job control on steroids. You can create a screen session which will persist after you log out, allowing you to return to it hours or even days later. It has a scroll back feature, and you can bring up multiple windows in a single session.

Quite nifty.

Getting started

The commands C-a L shown below mean to press the Control key and then the a key together, release then press the final (letter) key to issue the command. It is also possible to change the C-a sequence in the .screenrc file.

• (re)attach to screen session, create if necessary

screen -DR

• Create a new window in current screen

C-a d

• Detach from current screen

C-a c Detach from current screen

• Enter copy/scrollback mode.

C-a esc

Create or join a shared screen session. This is incredibly useful if you want to walk someone through an install when they're in a different physical location and have logged in as same user on a different tty

screen -xR