What must I know to use GNU Screen properly?
I've been using Screen
for over 10 years and probably use less than half the features. So it's definitely not necessary to learn all its features right away (and I wouldn't recommend trying). My day-to-day commands are:
^A ^W - window list, where am I
^A ^C - create new window
^A space - next window
^A p - previous window
^A ^A - switch to previous screen (toggle)
^A [0-9] - go to window [0-9]
^A esc - copy mode, which I use for scrollback
I think that's it. I sometimes use the split screen features, but certainly not daily. The other tip is if screen seems to have locked up because you hit some random key combination by accident, do both ^Q
and ^A ^Q
to try to unlock it.
Ctrl+A ? - show the help screen!
I couldn't get used to screen until I found a way to set a 'status bar' at the bottom of the screen that shows what 'tab' or 'virtual screen' you're on and which other ones there are. Here is my setup:
[roel@roel ~]$ cat .screenrc
# Here comes the pain...
caption always "%{=b dw}:%{-b dw}:%{=b dk}[ %{-b dw}%{-b dg}$USER%{-b dw}@%{-b dg}%H %{=b dk}] [ %= %?%{-b dg}%-Lw%?%{+b dk}(%{+b dw}%n:%t%{+b dk})%?(%u)%?%{-b dw}%?%{-b dg}%+Lw%? %{=b dk}]%{-b dw}:%{+b dw}:"
backtick 2 5 5 $HOME/scripts/meminfo
hardstatus alwayslastline "%{+b dw}:%{-b dw}:%{+b dk}[%{-b dg} %0C:%s%a %{=b dk}]-[ %{-b dw}Load%{+b dk}:%{-b dg}%l %{+b dk}] [%{-b dg}%2`%{+b dk}] %=[ %{-b dg}%1`%{=b dk} ]%{-b dw}:%{+b dw}:%<"
sorendition "-b dw"
[roel@roel ~]$ cat ~/scripts/meminfo
#!/bin/sh
RAM=`cat /proc/meminfo | grep "MemFree" | awk -F" " '{print $2}'`
SWAP=`cat /proc/meminfo | grep "SwapFree" | awk -F" " '{print $2}'`
echo -n "${RAM}kb/ram ${SWAP}kb/swap"
[roel@roel ~]$