blag/post/gnu-screen-start-with-multiple-windows-and-commands.mdwn

   1 [[!meta title="GNU screen: start with multiple windows and commands"]]
   2 [[!meta date="2010-07-30"]]
   3 [[!meta author="rohieb"]]
   4 [[!meta license="CC-BY-SA 3.0"]]
   5
   6 I wanted to restart my IRC bot on reboot, but I also wanted to have
   7 control over it and see its log output, so I wanted to start it inside a
   8 `screen` session.  This is nearly trivial, `screen -dmS yoursessionname
   9 yourcommand` is your friend, and you can later on reattach using `screen
  10 -r yoursessionname`.
  11
  12 But what if I want to start multiple commands, each in its own screen
  13 window? My first solution used `screen -dmS` followed by something like
  14 `screen -r sessionname -X screen; screen -r sessionname -X next; screen
  15 -r sessionname -X title "my window title"; screen -r sessionname -X exec
  16 "my command line"`, but it seems that the `next` command fails in this
  17 context, and I ended up with all the mess in one single window.
  18
  19 My next approach (okay, it took me half an hour of reading [the
  20 manual][0] until here ;-)) was more succesful: I created a session
  21 command file which contained screen commands like this:
  22
  23     screen
  24     select 1
  25     title "my window title"
  26     exec mycommand arguments ...
  27
  28 [0]: http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/manual/
  29
  30 And, voilà, I could paste the single command line into my crontab:
  31 `screen -dmS sessionname && screen -r sessionname -X source
  32 sessioncommandfile`
  33
  34 [[!tag hacking howto cron GNU screen]]