Sudo as different user and running screen

Solution 1:

Try running script /dev/null as the user you su to before launching screen - its a ghetto little hack, but it should make screen happy.

Solution 2:

I am using a wrapper function around screen for the user(s) that I sudo su to. This is the wrapper function that I've added to the user(s) ~/.bashrc:

function screen() {
  /usr/bin/script -q -c "/usr/bin/screen ${*}" /dev/null
}

This allows me to use all of the options and parameters for screen that I might want to use. I am contemplating on putting this function systemwide.

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Solution 3:

Assuming they are SSHing into the host anyway, you could add the public ssh keys for each user that needs access to the monitor account in the ~monitor/.ssh/authorized_keys file. Then on each user's remote machine they can run

ssh -t [email protected] screen -RD

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Solution 4:

Assuming we're talking about this error:

$ sudo su - bob
$ screen
Cannot open your terminal '/dev/pts/5' - please check.

Here's a one-liner (could be used as "alias gobob", for example):

sudo su - bob -c "script -c bash /dev/null"'

Explanation:

This will start a shell (like login shell) as user bob. User bob starts script, which is told to invoke a bash (could be dash or ksh...) and a copy of the session is thrown away.