I decided to change the blog a little bit. I felt that the scope of the blog was too narrow, and I wasn't really taking time with some of the subject matter (FreeBSD, I'm sorry). So, because I am always trying out new programs that I hear about I thought that I would share my experience on those also.

So todays subject: screen. This has got to be one of the coolest programs that I have run across in the open source world. Most will know what screens is, so I won't take the time to go through it entirely. Just the brief: you can have multiple command lines each on their own "window"; or you can split that window into various "regions" to have a very interactive shell. So what you say, you can do that now with tabs. Here is the supper thing. You can then detach this screen session and re-attach it to a different machine. It is like you never left. You can also use it to have two computers hooked to the same shell. Great for tutorials and stuff. Also, ever run a server were you want a gui just for xterm so you can have the tabs. This is the way to go!

Now another cool thing, it is probably already installed on your system. It came by default on my ubuntu, Fedora 7, and openSUSE 10.3 machines.

For practical uses I have been playing around with irssi and centericq (thoughts pending on those) and while at work I ssh into my home box and us my chat/irc clients, run updates, download what I need, etc. Then at the end of the work day, I can disconnect the screen session, come home, reattach it on my home computer, and not miss a thing. Everything still running, downloads still going, nothing missed. Very cool.

In short, screen is awesome! To learn more use "man screen"

by Will Smith at 6:48 AM under remote managment , screen , ssh