GNU Screen

Forum: DSL Ideas and Suggestions
Topic: GNU Screen
started by: tawalker

Posted by tawalker on June 28 2006,09:43

I recently discovered the delights of < GNU Screen >, and find it very useful on my Debian-based home server. (For anyone who doesn't know, Screen allows you to run multiple 'windows' inside a single terminal session - it has been described as a "window manager for the console".)

Has anyone thought of including Screen in DSL, or packaged it as a .dsl, .uci, etc.? I suppose strictly speaking, Screen is not really essential in DSL - I guess most people will run DSL with X, and you can just open a number of ATerms if you need to run multiple console programs at the same time.

Mind you, Screen is great if you're logging in remotely over SSH, and don't want to run a VNC session for multiple programs (in case the bandwidth is a problem).

So, I may have answered my own question (

), but does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Thanks,
Tim.

Posted by mikshaw on June 28 2006,14:00

There is a screen.dsl:
< http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub....sl.info >

I haven't tried this particular package, since i use my own uci version. It was never released because it requires a permission change to a system file in order to work in tty as normal user...not something i want to force, and the screen.dsl was released while i was trying to figure out a solution. So i'm not sure if the screen.dsl works in tty or not. If you try it, please let me know....otherwise i'll probably check it out myself.

Another very useful feature of screen is the ability to detach a running application, log out while it's still running, and come back to it later.

Posted by tawalker on June 28 2006,21:49

Ah, it was under 'wm_apps' - didn't think of looking there, though I suppose Screen is a kind of window manager

The 'detaching' feature certainly is useful - before I discovered Screen, if I wanted to download something with wget which would take a while, I either set it as an 'at' job for five minutes in the future, or started a VNC session and downloaded the file in a terminal window. Now I can do it all at the console, and come back to it later - wish I'd discovered Screen sooner...

Anyway, will try the .dsl, and see how I get on - thanks for your help

Tim

Posted by mikshaw on June 29 2006,01:18

I probably should have also explained that it is only in a typical auto-login DSL system that my version doesn't work without the permission change. This is because tty1 is already owned by root, who then su's to dsl. If you have your system set up with a login prompt (multi-user system) then your user should have no trouble.

I'm mostly curious about whether this is the same for the dsl version....I know i could try it myself, but I've been focusing almost entirely on mounted extensions, and figured if you're going to try it anyway....