Session freezes when using the screen command
Solution 1
I don't know about typing Ctrl-A twice, but Ctrl-a A should give a prompt to enter a new title for the current window. You might want to try Ctrl-q then Ctrl-d a couple of times until you see [Screen is terminating]
. If you get that, then nothing has frozen, it was just waiting for input somewhere. What does your ~/.screenrc
file look like, if you have one?
Solution 2
By default C-A A
does nothing. Do you have it bound to something in your .screenrc?
The only key combo I've had freeze my screen session is C-a s
, which according to the screen manual does "xoff". I've never intentionally hit this combo. I used to blame it on screen freezing until I caught myself hitting C-a s
instead of C-a a
or C-a A
.
Once you've hit that dastardly combo, the only graceful way out is to switch xoff to xon by using the key combo C-a q
. Reading through the man page, it all has something to do with flow control. Near as I can tell it emulates Scroll Lock.
Read more about flow control in Gnu's Screen: manual
Solution 3
When using the screen command, C-a s will freeze your screen. You can unfreeze it with C-a q. To prevent C-a s from accidentally freezing your screen, put this line in your ~/.screenrc
bind s
Solution 4
I cannot find that key sequence in screen
's manual page. Try ctrl+a twice instead, this is documented and you can be more lucky:
C-a C-a (other) Toggle to the window displayed previously. Note that this binding defaults to the com- mand character typed twice, unless overrid- den. For instance, if you use the option "-e]x", this command becomes "]]".
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user784637
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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user784637 over 1 year
This happens to me once every couple of hours. When I use the screen command and attempt to switch between windows by pressing ctrl+shift+a twice in succession, my session freezes.
This has happened to me when I've used putty to ssh to cloud servers and also to servers in my LAN at home.
Does anyone know any fixes to this?
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djeikyb over 12 yearsCan you edit your question to include the contents of your
~/.screenrc
? C-A C-A should have no effect, by default. Note, I'm following screen's convention of writing "ctrl+shift+a" asC-A
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Mark Winterbottom about 8 yearsYes it seems if I press Ctrl + A + S it will freeze the screen. The only way out is Ctrl + Q to quit and then come back into screen.
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user784637 over 12 yearsWill try this out the next time it happens and report back to you heh
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user784637 over 12 yearsctrl-q did the trick, thanks so much! Cute little twins!
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Chinasaur over 9 yearsSame here; after a few freezes I realized it was
C-a s
, but didn't know aboutC-a q
.