Re: screen vs. multiple xterm's

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Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 04:16:59 -0500
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org

On Mon, Aug 16 at 12:24AM -0700, Paul Scott wrote:
> Will Trillich wrote:
>
> ><>okay, it's a bit of hyperbole. but MAN i don't remember what
> >life was like a few weeks ago without "screen"!
> >
> >there i was, minding my own business...
> >
> >(snip)
>
> Sounds great in this case!
>
> ><>very, very sexy, this "screen" thing. very!
>
> I keep looking at "screen." I just tried it again. My temporary
> conclusion is that it would be obviously very valuable when not running
> X. When running X I more often than not want to see two or more
> consoles (xterms, etc.) at the *same* time.
>
> Clearly I could make all of my xterms into "screen"'s and get the best
> of both worlds but it's not clear at this point why I would want to
> bother. Could some of you "screen" users suggest some circumstances
> under which I would benefit from this? How does "screen" beat multiple
> xterms?

inside your xterm, launch an editor and make some changes.

now before you save those changes, close your xterm window.
gone!

or, try getting into that session from another computer. not very
bloody likely! (there may be ways, of course, but the easy
solution is much sexier.)

try again:

launch another xterm. inside xterm, start 'screen'.

now launch an editor and edit something. don't save changes
(this happens to all of us, admit it!) and close your xterm.

poof! it's STILL THERE!

you can now switch to console (alt-ctl-f1) and do "screen -D -R"
to reattach to your original session! really, no, really! make
some more changes, go out for lunch...

now visit a buddy across town and ssh in to your server from his
windows machine and do "screen -D -R" and take up where you left
off. when his computer freezes up, no worries (for you)...

now you travel to piscataway and borrow an imac there to ssh in
to your home machine and do "screen -D -R" and resume your
undo/redo state, command-line history, suspended jobs et al --
as if you hadn't ever left that first xterm.

priceless!

a newbie who you've infected with the debian bug calls you in
distress with a shell scripting problem. you can't go over to
see what's up just now (the spouse is nearly home from work and
you've got plans for the evening). the newbis isn't explaining
herself very well, so you just have her run "screen" and then
you ssh in remotely to her machine using her login, and you run
"screen -x". now you can WATCH her keystrokes (and intervene!)
as she demonstrates -- live -- what she's having trouble with.

in considering xterm and screen, they are NOT mutually exclusive:
i.e it's NOT "multiple xterms" VS. "multiple screens". (seems to me
like having to choose between color and shape -- neither impinges
upon the other.) you don't have to choose between multiple
desktops and multiple xterms, do you? :)

nothing wrong with having each xterm run just one screen -- then
you can be away from your desk (down the hall, back at home,
around the world) and reattach to any of them -- even if your
xterms die. the fact that screen CAN run more than one session
is just gravy on the goose.

i have konsole running with six tabs -- one for each system i'm
ssh'd into. (one is the local maching itself, naturally.)

on each tab i've got at least two "screen" sessions -- one for
email and one for shell. ^A^A toggles between the two "screen"
sessions, and shift-left (shift-right) rotates among konsole tabs
(remote systems). EXTREMELY handy! [with colored prompts i'm
getting quicker at telling which machine i'm dealing with at a
glance... :) ]

sometimes i need two sessions on the same machine visible at
once, so i create a new konsole window, or rxvt, or xterm. (and
-- perish the thought -- there are times when these quickie
sessions don't even get their own screen session! heavens!)

:)

"screen" rules the roost, around here.

the only limitation is that the MACHINE on which you started your
screen session can't die -- screen uses a pipe/socket/thingie
that it plops into /var/run/screen in order to ply its magic, so
if your server dies, you're out of luck. heck, not only the
socket is wiped out, but so are the processes that had been
running under your screen session. (it'd be nice if screen had
dome sort of save-to-disk-for-later-resume-after-restart
algorithm, but screen handles plenty of miracles already...)
after a while you come to expect a screen session to be able to
withstand anything, but it can't last thru a server restart! :)

-- 
I use Debian/GNU Linux version 3.0;
Linux boss 2.4.18-bf2.4 #1 Son Apr 14 09:53:28 CEST 2002 i586 unknown
 
DEBIAN NEWBIE TIP #49 from Will Trillich <will@serensoft.com>
:
Looking to ENCODE OR DECODE SOME ROT-13 TEXT? No problem.
"Vg'f rnfl jvgu Ivz." It's a simple alphabet substitution where
each letter changes to its counterpart 13 places away in the
alphabet (a<->n, g<->t, etc) . Open the text in Vim, then
select it (type "v" at one end of the text to encode/decode,
then move to the other end) and then type "g?".
  Or, to rot-13 a whole line, just "g??".  That's all!
(Try ":help g?" for more info.)
Also see http://newbieDoc.sourceForge.net/ ...
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• Previous message: Rakhesh Sasidharan: "On downloading Debian ISOs"
• In reply to: Paul Scott: "screen vs. multiple xterm's was: Re: "screen" saves life, all in a day's work"
• Next in thread: Paul Scott: "Re: screen vs. multiple xterm's + remote connection"
• Reply: Paul Scott: "Re: screen vs. multiple xterm's + remote connection"
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