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How can screen be used to start a new session and run a command within that session without killing that session?

 screen -S myScreenName runSomething

I tried the above command and it says

[screen is terminating]

Did it run the command then kill the screen? I would like the screen to be detached after running the command instead of killing it. How can that be done?

Nyxynyx
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    Why are you using screen here at all, if the command is just going to exit immediately? – Michael Hampton Feb 27 '14 at 02:29
  • @MichaelHampton the command doesn't exit immediately, it runs a daemon that prints to stdout, so I would like to keep it in a screen session. I will be starting the screen session from an Ansible playbook. I don't know why screen terminates when I ran that command. – Nyxynyx Feb 27 '14 at 02:32
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    Then tell the daemon not to daemonize. – Michael Hampton Feb 27 '14 at 02:35
  • @MichaelHampton Great that works. Can screen be asked to detach after running the command? Tried `-d` but it says `There is no screen to be detached matching myScreenName` – Nyxynyx Feb 27 '14 at 02:50

3 Answers3

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This script prevent session killing:

screen -dmS test bash -c 'echo waiting 5 senconds...; sleep 5; exec bash'

Regards!

user80390
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  • It seems that starting a session name with `.` is not allowed (tried to give a relative file path as both session name and one of the arguments). – Luc Feb 16 '21 at 14:41
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to run a command and detach from the session:

screen -d -m runSomething
Nicky De Maeyer
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incous
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If you keep forgetting the right letters that go after dash, in order to avoid revisiting this question, you might as well type:

screen -h

where you'll see:

-dmS name     Start as daemon: Screen session in detached mode.
Jenny D
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Mini Fridge
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