MULTIPLE TERMINALS WITHIN ONE SSH SESSION USING GNU SCREEN

Jun 22, 2015 learning terminal screen Linux

Does the following scenario ever happen to you? You open a terminal and log into a Linux server through SSH to edit a file within the terminal. Now you need another terminal to run some commands to see whether you modifications take effect. So you have to open another terminal and ssh to the Linux server, type in the user name and password again. You will have to repeat this again and again whenever you need a new terminal. If it happens to you very often, try the command screen in your terminal after you ssh in your server:

user@local$ ssh user@server
user@server$ screen

This will launch a program called GNU Screen. It can provide you as many terminals as you want in one SSH session.

The first time you launch it, you will see some welcome messages in your terminal. Type Enter to dismiss the messages and you will be back to your SHELL prompt again. Where are my multiple terminals? You may ask. Well, there is only one at this moment. You will have to launch a new one by holding Ctrl and press a and then c. Now press Ctrl+a and then ", you will see a list of all terminals opened in your screen:

Press arrow keys to select one and Enter to go to that terminal. What!? Do I have to type so many keys to switch from one terminal to another You may ask. Yes, if you are used to tabs on top of your web browser, this is not acceptable. However, it is actually very easy to configure your screen to have something like a tab bar as shown in the top screen shot.

But before we get into details, let’s cover a basic concept of this program. screen is a program to create multiple virtual terminals in a physical terminal. It provides a set of commands (the commonly used ones are bound to hot keys) to create, delete, switch in between virtual terminals. By default, Ctrl+a is used to tell screen that the following key stroke is a hot key bound for a command to manipulate virtual terminals, instead of a key that is sent to the SHELL. It is basically a mode switch key. It switches from working-in-a-shell mode to manipulate-virtual-terminal mode. It is easy to find good introductions to the program if you search on Google GNU screen. Be sure to search for GNU screen instead of just screen, otherwise, you won’t find anything relevant.

Detach and attach

Ctrl+a and d to detach the screen from your current terminal. To attach again to your detached screen, try the following:

# list all screens running in the system
$ screen -list
# re-attach to one of them
# a list will be given for you to choose if there are more than one
$ screen -r

Mode-switch key

The default mode-switch key binding Ctrl+a is not convenient to type and conflict with the shell shortcut for moving to the start of a line. VI uses Esc to switch between insert and command modes. One can use the key below it, that is, ` as the mode-switch key for screen. This can be done by insert the following line in ~/.screenrc:

escape ``

Now you can jump to the 3rd terminal by typing `3, that is, press `, release it, press 3 and release it.

However, ` is used often by other programs as well. It’s better to use Ctrl+` instead of a single ` as the mode-switch key. To achieve this, put the following in your ~/.screenrc:

escape ^``

Use the function keys

If you’d like to jump to a terminal with just one key stroke, try the followings. F1 ~ F12 are not used by shell. They can be set in ~/.screenrc as hot keys for screen command without switching mode, for example,

bindkey -k k1 select 1 # press F1 to select window 1
bindkey -k k2 select 2 # press F2 to select window 2
bindkey -k k3 select 3 # press F3 to select window 3
bindkey -k k4 select 4 # press F4 to select window 4

bindkey -k k8 screen 1 # create a new screen by pressing F8
bind c screen 1        # Window numbering starts at 1, not 0

# press F9/F10 to scroll up/down
bindkey -k k9 eval "copy" "stuff ^u"
bindkey -k k; eval "copy" "stuff ^d"
bindkey -m -k k9 stuff ^u
bindkey -m -k k; stuff ^d

bindkey -k F1 prev # press F11 to go to previous window
bindkey -k F2 next # press F12 to go to next window

The -k option tells the bindkey command the following string is not a normal string but a termcap keyboard capability name.

Use the title bar of physical terminal as tab bar

You need a tab bar to show all terminals you create just as the tab bar in your web browser. This can be achieved with the following simple setup:

# define things to be shown in the status bar (mimicking tabs)
hardstatus lastline "%{= Bk}%H | %-w%{= kB}%n*%t %{-}%+w"
# use the terminal title bar if possible
hardstatus on

Show running commands on title bar

You need to do some settings in both your ~/.screenrc and your ~/.bashrc to show the latest running commands on the window title bar.

The title of a screen window can be set in ~/.screenrc by the following command

shelltitle "] |bash"

According to the GNU screen manual, the string after | is the default title for a new screen window, the one before | is the last part of the shell prompt, which is used to tell screen to use the first word after the prompt as the title. One more setup is needed in .bashrc to make the whole thing work:

case "$TERM" in
screen)
  PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033k\033\\"'
  ;;
*)
  ;;
esac

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