Using Screen

[John Nielsen]

On Wednesday 29 November 2006 12:43, John Nielsen wrote:
> On Wednesday 29 November 2006 12:35, Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
> > On 2006-11-29 12:22, Dan Sikorsky <dan at cupid.com> wrote:
> > > Hey, I have a good question for you guys.
> > >
> > > Lets say, I started a job on a computer, if you must know, portmanager
> > > -u , and then left... but I know its sitting there stuck on a config
> > > window waiting for someone to press enter...  I do not have screen
> > > installed on this machine...
> > >
> > > my question is, can I ssh in, install screen (or not i suppose it
> > > wouldnt matter) and bring that process to either screen, or my ssh
> > > terminal?
> >
> > In general, "no".
> >
> > You can _try_ using watch(8), from a superuser session, but I am not
> > sure if it will catch whatever has already been displayed on the side
> > of the watched terminal...
>
> The watch utility will only display writes that happen after it was
> started.
>
> See also vidcontrol(1), in particular the -p and -P options. You can get
> a "screen shot" of a virtual terminal that way.

And to answer your original question, no I don't think there's a way to bring 
a process over to another terminal, but you could use vidcontrol -P to see 
what's on the screen already (this only works from "real" console virtual 
terminals, e.g. /dev/ttyvX) and then use watch -W to "take over" from there.

JN