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How do you detach the 2nd screen from within another screen? - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

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Tags: linux howto command-line screen unix.stackexchange.com

Clipped on: 2021-09-17

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How do you detach the 2nd screen from within another screen?

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Asked 12 years, 6 months ago

Active 3 years, 2 months ago

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I've accidentally attached to a 2nd GNU screen session from within an existing screen session and cannot detach or issue commands to the inner screen. I remember figuring out how to do that before but completely forgot and would like to keep it as reference.

One way is to detach the inner screen by doing screen -dr from shell, but what is the key combination to do that from within screen itself?

gnu-screen

Edit

edited Jan 14 '12 at 18:41

ctrl-a a d

Edit

answered Mar 16 '09 at 22:12

If you've customized screen's escape character to something other than Ctrl-A, then the key sequence will be quite different. :)

– slacy

Mar 16 '09 at 22:28

Yeah, you're on your own with that. <esc> a d may work; the man page is ambiguous, since it says that a sends the escape character, then clarifies that what it means by that is ctrl-A. So it's a crapshoot.

– chaos

Mar 16 '09 at 22:37

Thanks, there we go, that's exactly what I remembered too and when I told it to my co-worker who was having this problem, he said it didn't work. Of course, now I found out he was pressing ctrl-a, ctrl-a, d, instead of ctrl-a, a, d. Voted and closed.

– Artem Russakovskii

Mar 16 '09 at 23:32

@brandizzi: Have you tested this? Because I deeply suspect it is not the case, and that the sequence you would use is ctrl-t a d.

– chaos

Oct 24 '13 at 15:19

@chaos have you tested this? I tried it right now and, yes, C-t t d detaches the screen inside a screen. Can you try it? Just add escape ^Tt to your ~/.screenrc.

– brandizzi

Oct 24 '13 at 16:47

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-1

Well, there is a hack for this. Just remotely de-attach the required screen by following command

screen -r -d screen_name or screen -rd screen_name

Edit

answered Jul 14 '18 at 11:35

In general, if you have a screen s3 within another screen s2 within another screen s1, you can execute a command ctrl-a d in the screen:

s1 by doing: ctrl-a d
s2 by doing: ctrl-a a d
s3 by doing: ctrl-a a a d
...

Edit

answered Jul 7 '18 at 7:02

ctrl+a a will pass the escape sequence (ctrl+a) to the sub-screen.. So, ctrl+a a d will do ctrl+a d in the sub-screen (detaching it)

It works with any screen command, for example ctrl+a, a, c will create a window in the sub-screen

Edit

answered Mar 21 '09 at 9:20

This one has a better explanation

– Sgnl

Sep 21 '17 at 0:54

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