Using Screen

This tip demonstrates the use of screen which is a "fullscreen window manager that multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes." Practically speaking, this just means you can use screen to start a process in one terminal and check the output in another.
While there are many options to screen (man screen), this example demonstrates starting an emerge on a remote box, and then checking on the process from another machine.
Code Listing 1: screen + emerge

# screen 
# emerge -u mozilla 
// To see the commands in screen use Ctrl-a ? 
// The following command detaches the screen 
# Ctrl-a d 
[detached]

Now the screen is detached, open another terminal or ssh session and view the available screens with screen -list. To reattach to the screen and check the command's progress, use screen -r.
Code Listing 2

# screen -list 
There is a screen on: 
30901.pts-6.iris        (Detached) 
1 Socket in /var/run/screen/S-david. 
# screen -r

This will reattach to the screen and display the output of the emerge command.
You can name your screen session by giving the -S <name> option. This makes finding the screen easier if you got a couple of them running.
You reattach with screen -r <name>.
From http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20030714-newsletter.xml

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