Ubuntu – How to detach a screen session from a terminal

Did you really mean to put the \ at the end of the line? If not then try removing those - they escape the following character.

also, dropping the -X helps the setup work for me, for instance:

screen -S test -d -m -X touch /tmp/test

fails with No screen session found, however:

screen -S test -d -m touch /tmp/test

works fine. As such I suspect the following will work for you:

#!/bin/bash
screen -S test -d -m $HOME/folder/folder/.program
screen -S test2 -d -m $HOME/folder/folder/.program2

Remember, that if you run this at boot time, $HOME is not the same as after you log in as a specific user. If you need to run it as a certain user you'll need to use the likes of su to run it as that user, and specifying the full path will remove any ambiguity:

#!/bin/bash
screen -S test -d -m su - username /home/username/folder/folder/.program
screen -S test2 -d -m su - username /home/username/folder/folder/.program2

Or, you would call the entire script above as su - username /path/to/your/script.

There are two levels of "listings" involved here. First, you have the "window listing" within an individual session, which is what ctrl-A A is for, and second there is a "session listing" which is what you have pasted in your question and what can also be viewed with screen -ls.

You can customize the session names with the -S parameter, otherwise it uses your hostname (teamviggy), for example:

$ screen

(ctrl-A d to detach)

$ screen -S myprogramrunningunderscreen

(ctrl-A d to detach)

$ screen -ls

There are screens on:
    4964.myprogramrunningunderscreen    (05/31/2013 09:42:29 PM)    (Detached)
    4874.pts-1.creeper  (05/31/2013 09:39:12 PM)    (Detached)
2 Sockets in /var/run/screen/S-paul.

As a bonus, you can use an unambiguous abbreviation of the name you pass to -S later to reconnect:

screen -r myprog

(I am reconnected to the myprogramrunningunderscreen session)