Re: can screen protect me against dropped ssh connections?

[Michael Parson]

On Thu, Jun 22, 2006 at 08:00:49AM +0200, Aaron Bingham wrote:
> Eric Wood wrote:

>> Thanks to dropped ssh connections I have hung user sessions on my
>> server.  So I thought screen could help.
>>
>> 1. If a telnet/ssh connection drops, will screen auto-detach so that
>> a subsequent login will reatach automatically and pick up just were
>> the user left off?
>
> I use screen primarily to solve this problem.  I don't know whether
> screen can be configured to automatically reattach at login; I have
> not tried.  Running screen -R after logging in again gets me back to
> where I was interrupted, however.

Screen is it's own terminal emulator, as well as everything else it
does.  As long as your TERM is set to either 'screen' or somethign
compatible, since I don't always have the 'screen' terminfo installed on
all the boxes I use, I start screen with 'screen -T vt220' which gets
around that problem.  As long as your terminal type apps know how to
deal with a vt220, you should be OK.

Starting screen with '-R' can be unexpected, since it will start a
new screen if it doesn't find one to attach too.  I tend to use '-rd'
instead, since it will notify me if the old screen died off for some
reason, it will also force a detach if the session is still attached
somewhere, even to a shell that I'm no longer logged into.

-- 
Michael Parson
address@hidden