GNU Screen instead of Bash at login

Edward_Guyatt · 07-05-2015, 11:42 AM

When I log in at a VT or start a terminal emulator, bash is run. With a graphical terminal emulator, in order to avoid bash and have a program manage the terminal directly, I can run something like:

Code:

$ xfce4-terminal -e screen

How can I run Screen (or another program e.g. mc) at a VT console without bash? If all that instance of bash does is one command, I feel I might as well cut it out for speed and elegance.

Another problem is that just entering the command screen once seems to cause it to be run twice, with one instance nested within the other. Here's some output from top in Forest View Mode:

Code:

11002 root      20   0   0.0  0.3  `- login                                    
11016 user      20   0   0.0  0.6      `- bash                                 
11039 user      20   0   0.0  0.3          `- screen                           
11040 user      20   0   0.0  0.3              `- screen                       
11041 user      20   0   0.0  0.6                  `- bash                     
11049 user      20   0   0.0  1.4                      `- weechat-curses

How can I make screen be run just once?

Thanks in advance,

Ed

fatmac · 07-06-2015, 06:31 AM

Basically, you need a shell running otherwise the computer can't accept your input.
You have a login shell, then you have bash, (which may or may not be the same shell), then you load in your terminal multi plexer (screen)
Once in screen, use ctrl+A T to get another terminal instance, then use ctrl+A N to go to the next terminal instance, use ctrl+A P to go to the previous terminal instance. (ctrl+A ? will show you the commands.)

Edward_Guyatt · 07-10-2015, 10:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatmac

Basically, you need a shell running otherwise the computer can't accept your input.

Oh okay... I thought that the shell just interpreted command lines and applications would be able to talk directly to the console, which I understand (maybe wrongly) to be a the program that renders text into pixels for the monitor. I take it that this is not the case and you do actually need a shell to run screen... but then how come you can run an ncurses program like screen directly inside a terminal just using the -e option for the terminal command?