View Source: SshAlwaysScreen

This one is for the sysadmins out there.  If you use this, you will never have to worry about losing long-running commands when you get disconnected from a remote server.

tl;dr: you should be automatically starting screen when you ssh to remote hosts.  This has saved my butt many times.  My script below either forces a reconnect to an existing screen session, or starts a new session if one doesn't already exist.

You could substitute tmux if you want, I just don't know the equivalent of screen's <code>-D -RR</code> functionality.

One small annoyance is you get double logins for login failures not related to screen.  Oh wel.

Anyway, here's my frankly not very good shell function.  Stick it in your <code>.bashrc</code>:
<pre>
# always use screen on remote hosts if possible
ssh ()
{
    if [ x$1 = x ]
    then
        # ssh doesn't make sense without arguments
        echo "must supply hostname" >%2
    elif [ x"$2" = "x" ]
    then
        # only hostname specified, try to ssh and launch screen
        if ! /usr/bin/ssh -t $1 screen -A -D -RR
        then
            # if attempt to launch screen failed, fall back to regular
            # ssh
            /usr/bin/ssh $@
        fi
    else
        # if user passes more than one arg, it's something to execute
        # on remote host, and thus we don't want to launch remote
        # screen.
        /usr/bin/ssh $@
    fi
}
</pre>

Anyway, like I said, this will always try to reconnect to an existing screen session, or start a new one if there isn't one on the remote host.

I also recommend that if you run screen on your local machine too, you bind your screen prefix to <code>ctrl-B</code> instead of the default of <code>ctrl-A</code>.  Then ctrl-A will always affect the remote session, not your local session. I know it sounds a little complicated, but you get used to it pretty quick.  If you need to send a ctrl-A through to the remote server (for example, to go to the beginning of the line), hit <code>ctrl-A A</code>.

If you often log on to random servers, give this a try.  You won't regret it.
-----
CategoryGeekStuff\\
CategoryLinuxStuff
View Source: SshAlwaysScreen

Main Categories

Search

Toolbox

RecentChanges

Favorite Categories

Views
