Mac – Running emacs inside screen

emacsgnu-screen

I have a screenrc file but I am finding some conflicts when I run emacs inside screen. For e.g, moving across buffers in emacs, Ctrl-right arrow/left arrow, instead of moving back and forth sends some characters into the buffers such as 5C, 5D etc. This problem exists even when I invoke screen without any screenrc file. But at least the other conflicts were not there. But I would be very grateful if someone could tell me how to fix this ?
Since I have my own bindings in my screenrc file and I want to continue using it, so I was thinking that I will keep my screenrc file but when I want to start emacs in a new screen, I will not use my screenrc. Is there any way to while invoking screen to not to use screenrc ? Till now I have been managing by renaming my screenrc file to something else when starting emacs.
Is there any way in which emacs itself can work as screen, as in I am using screen so that my emacs session does not terminate whenever the remote ssh session goes down. I found some documentation regarding emacs client and emacs server but could not understand much. I would appreciate if someone could tell how to save sessions inside emacs and restore them so that I dont need to use screen for emacs if its possible, as in one should be able to restore the emacs process again.

Best Answer

I only have input on your question #3.

As of emacs 23, emacs has a daemon mode which for me has obviated the need to run emacs inside screen. On my first login after a boot, I start emacs --daemon in a terminal. This starts emacs in the background. Then, whenever I need to use emacs, I either run emacsclient -nc to get an X window to my emacs session, or emacsclient -t to get a terminal session.

Multiple clients can coexist happily. I routinely run an X client on my workstation screen at work, an X client through ssh login from home, and a terminal client on my phone. All talking to the same emacs process, with all my buffers and other state intact. And should my ssh connection on my phone die, I can just continue where I left off after logging in again.

I don't know enough about keybindings in screen to help you with your first two questions.

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CtrlS is the "Pause transmission" (XOFF) flow control character. Usually it's handled by the tty driver, or in this case Screen. Its opposite is XON, or CtrlQ.

When you launch Emacs, it normally takes over most of the special characters (not just flow control, but also the usual CtrlC "Interrupt", for example).

Use C-a :flow off to disable flow-control for this Screen window.

Confirm with C-a :info (look for -flow in the pop-up).
If it doesn't help, try stty -ixon or stty stop undef.

(You can do it from a separate window using stty -f /dev/tty1 or stty </dev/tty1.)

On my system (Linux), Screen does notice when flow control is disabled for the tty. Your OS might have some limitations, though.

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The .bash_profile file (and .profile file as well) is loaded for login shells, non-login shells use .bashrc (no _ symbol). There is a line in the .screenrc file that tells screen what shell to spawn when starting a screen window (when not launching a specific program as the window application). In my .screenrc file, this is as such (including comments as well):

# shell:  Default process started in screen's windows.
# Makes it possible to use a different shell inside screen
# than is set as the default login shell.
# If begins with a '-' character, the shell will be started as a login shell.
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Check your .screenrc file and verify that the shell line has the dash in front of it. By having that dash symbol and forcing a login shell, you'll get your .bash_profile sourced. The $SHELL variable in my .screenrc is using the shell value as provided by the shell that launches screen (generally for me it's bash).

In case you're wondering, the biggest difference that I've been able to discover between login versus non-login shells is that a non-login shell is normally what's invoked for executing scripts.

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