Linux Screen Tutorial

Screen is a shell layer that allows you to use one shell session, detach from it, and then reattach from a different computer where you left off. It’s useful for long jobs, recording what commands were run, and bad connections that might drop your SSH shell in the middle of a work session.

$ which screen
/usr/bin/screen

Install Screen

For Debian-Based Linux, the command is:

$ sudo apt-get install screen

Start Screen

Start screen with the simple “screen” command and hit enter to begin using it.

Screen Commands

Here is the TLDR version that you probably are looking for:

• screen -S something

• screen -ls

• screen -r xxxx.something -D

Everything Else besides TLDR:

Linux Screen uses ctrl + a to start commands and then a character to do a specific command. You can see all of the commands using ctrl-a ?

A pwd will tell you what your working directory is, and you will have a screenlog.0 file in it with whatever commands you typed. If you Ctrl-a H again it will stop logging.

When you finally type “exit” or ctrl-a k to kill a session you will see the [screen is terminating] message.

Check if Screen is Running

If screen isn’t running, you can verify using the pgrep utilitiy

$ pgrep screen

If screen is running, you will get 2 process IDs:

$ pgrep screen
13020
13021

Example of Using Screen

Now you can review screenlog.0 file