One of the most useful applications for any system administrator is screen. It allows the execution of multiple shells in one terminal. To make some of the advanced screen features more user friendly, and provide some useful information about the system, the screen-profiles package was created.

When executing screen for the first time you will be presented with the screen-profiles-helper menu. This menu will allow you to:

The key bindings determine such things as the escape sequence, new window, change window, etc. There are two key binding sets to choose from common and none. If you wish to use the original key bindings choose the none set.

The Ubuntu screen-profiles provide a menu which displays the Ubuntu release, processor information, memory information, and the time and date. The effect is similar to a desktop menu. When a profile is selected it will be symlinked to ~/.screenrc. The select-screen-profile utility can also be used to change profiles, in a terminal enter:

select-screen-profile -s ubuntu-light

The plain profile will change screen back to the defaults, which does not include the information menu at the bottom.

Using the "Install screen by default at login" option will cause screen to be executed any time a terminal is opened. Changes made to screen are on a per user basis, and will not affect other users on the system.

One difference when using screen is the scrollback mode. If you are using one of the Ubuntu profiles press the F7, or Ctrl+a+[ if not, to enter scrollback mode. Scrollback mode allows you to navigate past output using vi like commands. Here is a quick list of movement commands: