Hello! I am trying to turn off GNU Screen's visual bell while it is connected to a serial connection. The command I am using is "screen /dev/ttyUSB0" the connection defaults to 9600 baud which is what the other side defaults to as well. When ~/.screenrc does not exist it connects fine, but the visual bell of the entire screen flashing is very annoying and gives me a headache after a short while.

When I try to add "vbell off" to ~/.screenrc (it being the only line in the file) screen terminates right away. I am at a loss of what to do from here. Any suggestions?

I have tried this both on a Raspberry Pi 2 with Raspbian and a Powerbook G4 running Debian with the same issue. The device on the other end of the serial connection is a Cisco Catalyst 2960 switch. The USB-to-Serial chip used is the PL2303.

ctrl-a ctrl-g should manually toggle the visual bell on and off.

But what is your full .screenrc file and the actuall command you use to launch screen with? Those might give clues as to why it is not working as expected.

My screenrc file has "vbell off" as it's only line.

The command I am using to start screen is "screen /dev/ttyUSB0"

Ideally I'd like to avoid using a per- session control for this as I will be in and out of the serial connection fairly often.

Ok. I have a similar setup but can only duplicate the symptoms you describe if I leave off the speed or if screen is already running.

Is a session already running, but detached?

When there is no session already in place, what happens when you launch while specifying the speed as well?

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There was another serial session that was running on the system. Killing it made screen work as I wanted it too! Thank you! I didn't even think to check if there was another screen session running.

To stop the one already running it was a simple pkill screen.