Michael Kahle wrote:
I am not sure how to ask for what I want here. But, here goes. I was using dump to make a backup of a directory on my computer. This was started from a terminal in X. As it was running I could see in the terminal window all the status output from the program. Good. This backup job took a long time to complete and so I went home while the backup was still running. When at home I ssh'd into the box to see if the dump process was still running, it was. Then I got to thinking, how can I see the output of this program in my current ssh session? Is there a program that exists to allow me to redirect the output of a program running in a terminal to another terminal? I hope I am explaining this clearly.
I use 'screen' for this alot, but you have to start it ahead of time.Screen acts as its own virtual terminal. You start screen from any terminal and it leaves you at a terminal prompt. Now you can do whatever you want (i.e. start your backup). From another terminal (ssh'd in or otherwise) you can cause that screen virtual terminal to be displayed on your new terminal and not the original one. The screen manpage describes all the keystrokes and options required for this.
Another great use of screen is to open multiple virtual terminals in a single terminal window. Once I ssh into a machine, I usually start a screen session so I can have multiple terminal windows to work with. That way I don't have to start multiple terminals on my machine and ssh into the target machine individually.
- Bobman