Since it was requested, below are the contents of my current .screenrc file for use with GNU screen. It’s got a hardstatus and a caption. I like it simple, but high contrast so that I don’t have to squint to see what it says, hence the bright colors. Feel free to customize and provide some feedback.
caption always '%{= Yk}%l%{= bW}%-Lw%{= rY}%50>%n%f %t%{= bW}%+Lw%< %{=kG}%-='
hardstatus string '%{= kG}[ %{G}%H %{g}][%= %{= kw}%?%-Lw%?%{r}(%{W}%n*%f%t%?(%u)%?%{r})%{w}%?%+Lw%?%?%= %{g}][%{B} %m/%d %{W}%c %{g}]'
screen -ln -t "host1" bash
split
focus top
screen -ln -t notes 9 vi /home/user1/notes/notes.txt
focus bottom
resize 6
focus top
bind s
I’ve gotten some help from others around the internet and the Gentoo community wiki was very helpful.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
People have told me about GNU screen and praised all its glory for a long time, however I never really got it going until now. I guess it might be one of those tools to you grow to use, but after getting the hang of it, I wish I had made the leap much sooner. Take it from me, if you regularly use and connect to multiple terminals, even on the same computer, you should make the mastery of screen a priority. After really sinking my teeth into the program over the last couple of weeks, here’s some things I found very helpful and important to my productivity.
- Use it in a full screen terminal. I use Fluxbox and Putty and both enable full screen capabilities.
- Spend some extensive time customizing your .screenrc file. I have mine configured to open 3 split regions and define a caption and a hardstatus line. It also adjusts the size of the regions for me and then puts the focus on my preferred region.
- Use a hardstatus line that makes sense for your preferred method. In Putty’s full screen mode, it still shows the windows toolbar, so my hardstatus line shows there.
- Decide on a split screen interface that makes works with your flow. This might be my best productivity trick, and I’m hoping others can share something that can further refine my technique. I usually work in a split screen interface with 3 regions and connect to three machines. The top region is I usually reserve as a command line for the same workstation that hosts my screen application. This allows me to always be able to easily add new windows to my screen session. My bottom region is usually reserved for an open notes text file. The region between is my “application” area. The top region I use to create “one-off” windows for programs and commands that i don’t care about once they are completed but would like to be able to monitor while it is running, such as the verbose output from an extensive rsync operation.
- Learn to use screen’s copy and paste function. When using screen in split screen mode, your terminal program doesnt handle the scrolling for you, so you’ll find it necessary to scroll back in one of those regions and copy and paste some information. Figure it out at your first opportunity and you’ll be satisfied. To get started it’s easy. The copy and paste default keys are logically paired on the keyboard and sensibly located. C-a [ for copy and C-a ] for paste. The first time you press C-a [ you will be able to use the up/down arrows to move the cursor. Move it to the beginning of the region you desire to highlight and then press enter. Then move the cursor using the arrow keys to the end of the region. Again, press enter to copy. Now switch to where you'd like to use the copied text as input, and press C-a ] to paste.
- Begin to use multiple sessions. Here’s where you take all of the incredible power of screen, and then multiply everything it does, and it requires no extra learning.
- Determine the important parameters for screen and quickly ignore the ones that you don’t find necessary. Some of the command line options look the same as others, especially amongst -d, -D, -R, -r, -RR and the manpage really makes a mockery of anyone trying to understand what the author intended as the differences. I usually rely on -D and -R.
- Begin to use multiple configuration files. By using multiple configuration files, you’re able to simply some automation. For example you can have one .screenrc file that manages all of your backup processes and another that handles your general login and system management operations. I also have a configuration file for screen that opens up an entire software development platform for me.
- Promptly add bind s on a blank line in the .screenrc file. This will prevent the errant suspension of the output of windows.
- Read the gentoo user’s wiki guide to using screen. It has a lot of excellent nuggets of information that are very helpful.
I hope you share some of your favorite tips here.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Here’s one of my favorite tips for Fluxbox. In KDE, Alt-F1 brings up application menu. In Windows, the Windows key brings up the Start menu.
Fluxbox should have a way too.
Here’s how I do it.
I edit the keys file. I use gedit for most of my editing in fluxbox because it is fast AND full featured. To edit this file, I use the default Alt-F2 to open the run dialog and execute the command:
gedit ~/.fluxbox/keys
then add this line into the document:
Mod1 F1 :RootMenu
Then use “Reconfigure” to reload the updated keys.
I noticed that the kind developers of Hydrogen have posted an update for us at their website. This worked on Jaunty Jackalope for me. Also available are Windows binaries for Hydrogen that work in Vista.
You can install it by downloading from SourceForge using the commands below:
cd
mkdir source
cd source
wget http://softlayer.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/hydrogen/hydrogen_0.9.4rc1_i386.intrepid.deb
dpkg -i hydrogen_0.9.4rc1_i386.intrepid.deb
Of note, is more use of Qt4 elements with less eye candy on the skins, and questionably easier to interpret. I kind of feel it clashes, but the Instrument and drum kit editor have been combined. It means one less place to find things, and that is progress.
Hydrogen drum computer software running on Ubuntu Linux
Having a laptop and a desktop is very useful because it provides another display. With the same mouse and keyboard, you can manage both the laptop and the desktop using Synergy2. Synergy2 is a free and open source application that allows us to share the same mouse and keyboard across multiple workstations. According to the official Ubuntu documentation, I recently configured this by using QuickSynergy in Ubuntu and the Synergy2 client in Windows. QuickSynergy is nice, but it doesn’t provide full functionality as it only arranges systems in a circle around the server. In my setup, this works, but it would not be ideal for 4 displays side by side. Instead, you would need to manually edit the configuration file. This is much easier on Windows in my previous experience. You may need to allow the client/server access to the desired port, the default being 24800. I was able to install directly from the repositories instead of from source on my two Ubuntu desktops, and the compiled Windows binaries worked perfectly, and even Windows firewall let it through.
My setup is quite flexible. I’ve got two desktops and one laptop sharing one monitor. The two desktops are connected via KVM to a display. That display has two inputs, so my laptop is also connected to the same monitor as an extended desktop. I have two methods of selecting inputs to the monitor : a button on the front and the KVM control via keyboard.
This kind of flexibility really speeds up and streamlines my music production and progress on Sample Of The Day. I am able to be blogging and editing audio on one display, while on the other I can have Propellerhead’s Reason making loops and free audio samples using the software synthesizers.
Well, I finally upgraded all four systems to Jaunty Jackalope. I did the upgrade in pairs so that the entire network wouldnt be offline. I spread it across two days. I used the tutorial from UbuntuGeek to upgrade via the konsole. It was mostly painless, with my laptop being the most troublesome. Having to re-configure a separate network manager, that wasn’t immediately visible, was a nuisance. I had to add a widget to the panel and then configure the widget. I would have preferred to keep my connection.
Now that I’m using a larger network, I’m attempting to connect my systems in a semantic interface using IRC. I’ve found that Quassel’s backlog system enables me to monitor multiple channels in one window and that’s pretty helpful. To top it off, I found you can connect it in a multi-user setup by configuring multiple users on the Quassel Core . Of course, centralizing this and delegating it to a server that is in less demand with fewer resources, worked perfectly for me. It simplified the backup and freed some resources across my net.
This is my first post mentioning Quassel, but it will not be my last. I am going to skip the really significant features that Quassel brags about (with much reason), but point to this lovely screen shot. It demonstrates how Quassel shows a tiny preview of a link beneath your mouse cursor, keeping you from having to open your browser to view a site that you may not really desire to visit.
I use the command line more than anything, and I try to stay up to date regularly, so I added an alias for the command I use for updates.
alias apt-up='sudo aptitude -y update && sudo aptitude -y full-upgrade '
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Recently, I have had a need to use Windows more frequently (Windows-only games and ActiveSync!), but still have a high demand on my network at the same time. I have sought to be able to combine the best of both worlds. I previously relied heavily on Web-based applications, but my favorite Web Development IDE was developed for Linux only. I had put up enough with the banalities of using WebMin and it’s built-in file editor. I have read about others having success running KDE apps on Windows, but since I had my Quanta already setup and configured, I looked for a way of just being able to access that. Honestly, I’m not very excited about using VNC over WiFi, even with high compression.
To my surprise, I found that Xming was specifically suited to my needs. It acts as an X11 server, allowing me to use it to display my X11 applications that I have forwarded through SSH. It works perfectly.
It took a little time for setting up, but if you have got PuTTY installed and working, sixty percent of the work is already done.
Below is a screen shot that shows my running Windows Vista desktop, programming in Quanta which is actually hosted on a server called A. This is connected through an SSH tunnel from my laptop to my C server using the Putty client. From the C server, I launch the Quanta program using another SSH connection to the A server. It looks just like the Quanta program is a native windows app on the local Windows Vista desktop. You’ll also notice I’ve got an xterm session open connected to server A in the background.
