LinuxAnswers DiscussionThis forum is to discuss articles posted to LinuxAnswers.
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
Screen has another potentially indispensable feature that is too seldom documented: multiuser mode. When appropriately configured, you can start up screen sessions that can be attached to by other users. Of course, there are access controls that allow you to configure who can attach and what rights they have.
In my work, this is heavily used to run processes that are intended to run perpetually, and that also have an interactive aspect. Anyone in my work group needs to be able to monitor these processes, and there are often numerous such processes running concurrently. We even have a GUI utility written in Perl/Tk that allows users to easily find, select, and open existing sessions or start new screen sessions.
I can envision other purposes, such as making a terminal session visible to all members of a 'classroom' (where the class could consist of remotely logged-in students).
Your example of 'backgrounding' long-running processes is a good one. Sometimes I will start up such a process, like a kernel build, at work, and then go home for the day. At home, I can check in by logging in with SSH, and re-attach to the screen session to monitor its progress.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.