November 29th 2007 I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for…Screen?

I learned how to use screen today. It’s a Linux program that lets you detach programs from the terminal. In simple terms, it lets me start a program, then log out of a machine—and still have that program running! Way cool—wish I had known about it before!

For those interested, using screen is simple:

  1. In a terminal window, type screen.
  2. Type the command you want to execute.
  3. Hit ctrl-a, then type d.
  4. Voilà! The program is now detached. It should say [detached] in your terminal.
  5. Log out. Don’t worry—your program is still running!
  6. Log back in. Open a terminal window and type screen -r. You should see your program running!
  7. Repeat steps 3-7 as desired.

Too cool!

(Oh, I forgot to add—much thanks to Chris Kenna for this helpful information!)