Dead Ink Vinyl

I was introduced to Screen — a terminal multiplexer — a couple of weeks ago. When I first tried it, I was mostly annoyed and set it aside. However, it came so highly recommended that I picked it up again and forced myself to learn enough that I could use it on a daily basis:

• screen -ls (list screens)
• screen -r (reattach)
• Ctl-A c (new screen)
• Ctl-A A (rename screen)
• Ctl-A <num> (switch to screen)
• Ctl-A d (detach)
• Ctl-A M (monitor for activity)
• Ctl-A _ (monitor for silence)

After getting those commands under my belt, I was very impressed and I use screen all the time now. However, a lot of Screen’s power comes from the customization of Screen through its startup files. Good information about startup files is scattered across the web, so I’ll share what I’ve put together.

Below is my ~/.screenrc file, compiled from the information at softpanorama, from Matt Cutts, from the Screen FAQ, and from the Screen manual’s command list. I’m using this on Ubuntu 8.10 servers over at Slicehost and on my MacOSX 10.5 laptop.

UPDATE: Added more comments around the termcapinfo setting that enables scrollbars to work as expected.

# For a complete list of available commands, see http://bit.ly/jLtj

# Message to display in the status line when activity is detected in a
# monitored window.
activity              "activity in %n (%t) [%w:%s]~"

# Detach session on hangup instead of terminating screen completely.
autodetach            on              # default: on

# When a bell character is sent to a background window, screen displays a
# notification in the message line. The notification message can be re-defined
# by this command.
bell_msg              "bell     in %n (%t) [%w:%s]~"

# This command controls the display of the window captions. Normally a caption
# is only used if more than one window is shown on the display.
caption               always          "%{= kw}%?%-Lw%?%{+b kw}%n*%t%f %?(%u)%?%{= kw}%?%+Lw%?"

# Select line break behavior for copying.
crlf                  off             # default: off

# Select default utmp logging behavior.
#deflogin              off             # default: on

# Set default lines of scrollback.
defscrollback         3000            # default: 100

# If set to 'on', screen will append to the 'hardcopy.n' files created by the
# command hardcopy; otherwise, these files are overwritten each time.
hardcopy_append       on              # default: off

# This command configures the use and emulation of the terminal's hardstatus
# line. The type 'lastline' will reserve the last line of the display for the
# hardstatus. Prepending the word 'always' will force screen to use the type
# even if the terminal supports a hardstatus line.
hardstatus            alwayslastline  "%{+b kr}[ %H ] %{ky} Load: %l %-=%{kb} %c  %Y.%m.%d"
msgwait               15

# Set message displayed on pow_detach (when HUP is sent to screen's parent
# process).
pow_detach_msg        "BYE"

# Set the default program for new windows.
shell                 bash

# Default timeout to trigger an inactivity notify.
silencewait           30              # default: 30

# Change text highlighting. See http://bit.ly/11RDGZ
sorendition           gK

# Do NOT display copyright notice on startup.
startup_message       off             # default: on

# Set $TERM for new windows. I have more luck with 'linux' than Terminal's
# default 'xterm-color' (^H problems). Comment out to use the default.
term                  linux

# Tweak termcap, terminfo, and termcapinfo  entries for best performance.
termcap               linux           'AF=\E[3%dm:AB=\E[4%dm'
termcap               xterm-color     'AF=\E[3%dm:AB=\E[4%dm'
terminfo              linux           'AF=\E[3%p1%dm:AB=\E[4%p1%dm'
terminfo              xterm-color     'AF=\E[3%p1%dm:AB=\E[4%p1%dm'

# Allow xterm / Terminal scrollbars to access the scrollback buffer. This
# enables the behavior you'd expect, instead of losing the content that scrolls
# out of the window.
termcapinfo           linux           ti@:te@
termcapinfo           xterm-color     ti@:te@

# Use visual bell instead of audio bell.
vbell                 on              # default: ???

# Message to be displayed when the visual bell is triggered.
vbell_msg             " *beep* "

Someone was asleep at the wheel when this got through QA.

I have Leopard setup to automatically log me out after 75 minutes of inactivity. However, that automatic logout is cancelled by Safari when Safari has multiple tabs open.

My mother has a Linksys wireless bridge so that she can use her laptop anywhere around her home. Of course, the default network name is “linksys”. And, of course, I’ve connected to that network while at her house.

About a month ago, someone nearby my home got a Linksys wireless router. The network is open and still named “linksys”. It’s actually somewhat convenient for times that my network is down (like when I’m overhauling my home network layout — I’ve never had an unscheduled outage with SpeakEasy that wasn’t my fault). Unfortunately, my laptop likes the new network more than it likes my home wireless network and would always connect there first. Not cool.

Finally, I’ve tracked down list of networks to which Airport will connect and removed a bunch of cruft. For example, I don’t think I’ll need eircom any time soon. To open the list of preferred wireless networks, navigate: Apple menu > System Settings > Network > Airport

After I removed everything except tmobile and my home network, I discovered that I could have simply re-arranged the networks in order of preference, putting my home network first. Oh well.