Getting multiple consoles on single login
 

I like doing some work using console. Using Alt+F to switch between consoles is pretty convenient, however this means you have to login to every console separately. Is there a way to login to several consoles at once?

perhaps you would like to use screen...

http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/

Screen does that, and much more. I usually have about eight console sessions and only one login.

You can also 'detach' all the sessions and they'll run in the background, even if your connection dies, your X-Server dies, or whatever. You can SSH into the box from anywhere and 'reattach' sessions, giving you all of those console sessions. They've been running, collecting output, whatever it is they would have done if you'd left them running in a regular console.

Screen is amazing.

The docs are a bit confusing. To start screen, 'screen'. That gives you Window #0. To open another window, CTRL-C. To switch windows, CTRL-*, where * is the window number. To see a list of all windows, CTRL-". To detech, CTRL-D. To reattach in a future login, do screen -r.

Thanks! I think screen will do what I need (perhaps a bit overkill for my simple needs though). I'll go and play now.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that all those commands must be prefaced by CTRL-A. That puts screen in command mode.

e.g., CTRL-A C to open a new window (don't need to hold control when you press C, but you can.)

I use emacs on the command line so I changed CTRL-A to CTRL-P so I still can use CRTL-A to get to the beginning of a line while using screen,to do this you can add:

escape ^pp

to the top of /etc/screenrc.

I did something similar, but for different reasons. I hate meta keys so I mapped F1-F10 to CTRL-A 1, CTRL-A 2, etc.

This is very easily done in .screenrc in your home directory. There are examples in that file to look at.

hi, guys
i am very new to screen program, i would appreciate any help to get it running.
i am trying to user screen program with either telnet or ssh to run commands without disconnecting from my eth0
when i try "screen" command and /sbin/ifconfig eth0 down , i get disconnected from my session , i think when unsing screen i should stay connected .
i would love to know the procedures how to get it running and working, when i type screen it only creates .screen and i do not seen .screenrc .
by the way , i am using redhat 9.

thanks to everybody.