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Table of Contents
screen Quick Reference
How to Navigate, copy & paste content?
within screen sessions: Cntl a + [ : To start navigation using up/down arrow Press Space bar: To select content starting position Press Space bar again: To select a block of content Cntl a + ] : To paste the selected content
Getting in
| start a new screen session with session name | screen -S <name> |
| list running sessions/screens | screen -ls |
| attach to a running session | screen -x |
| … to session with name | screen -r <name> |
| 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.) |
| detach a running session | screen -d <name> |
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.
XYETA
Help
| See help | C-a ? (lists keybindings) |
The man page is the complete reference, but it's very long.
XYETA
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 |
Scripting
# the screen name session has to be valid or else, message: No screen session found.
| send a command to a named session | screen -S <name> -X <command> |
| create a new window and run ping example.com | screen -S <name> -X screen ping example.com |
| stuff characters into the input buffer using 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 |
| enter copy mode | C-a [ or C-a <esc> (also used for viewing scrollback buffer) |
| paste | C-a ] |
| 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) display | C-a x |
| enter screen command | C-a : |
| enable logging in the screen session | C-a H |
| getting out of the screen session | exit |
Scrollback-buffer
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 |