Kill Attached Screen in Linux

Question

I created a screen "myscreen" in linux and it stopped responding abruptly. I closed the terminal and tried to reopen it. "screen -ls" shows that the screen is Attached. I tried the following commands but nothing responds.

screen -r myscreen
screen -D myscreen
screen -D -RR myscreen
screen -X -S myscreen quit

Any help to reattach to the screen or to kill the screen is very much appreciated.

Not sure what screen is, but if it's a process, then kill -9? — Alptigin Jalayr, Feb 11 '13 at 04:52
I am not sure if screen is a process. But "kill -9" will kill the entire process. But i want to kill the particular screen and leave the other screens uninterrupted. — Slowcoder, Feb 11 '13 at 05:02

score 127 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 25 '13 at 15:08

127

screen -X -S SCREENID kill

alternatively, you can use the following command

screen -S SCREENNAME -p 0 -X quit

You can view the list of the screen sessions by executing screen -ls

answered Nov 25 '13 at 15:08

Desta Haileselassie Hagos

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I notice the first command sequence only kills the last window if you have multiple windows open while the second actually kills the entire screen regardless of the number of windows. – Brian Keith Sep 09 '15 at 14:12
Is there a possibility to delete all processes and clear up the screen? – Jürgen K. Feb 03 '16 at 16:47
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Yeah sure and use either `pkill screen` or `killall screen` – Desta Haileselassie Hagos Feb 04 '16 at 01:06

score 22 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 29 '14 at 08:59

22

Create screen from Terminal:

screen -S <screen_name>

To see list of screens:

<screen -ls> or <screen -list>

To go to particular screen:

<screen -x screen_name>

<screen -r screen_name>

Inside screen

To Terminate screen:

give ctrl+d screen will get terminated

To Detach screen:

 give <ctrl+ad>or <screen -d >screen will get detached

To reattach screen:

screen -x <screen_name> or screen -r <screen_name>

To kill a screen from Terminal:

<screen -X -S screen_name quit>

or

<screen -X -S screen_name kill>

You can use screen_name or process_id to execute commands.

edited Dec 29 '14 at 08:59

vefthym

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answered Dec 29 '14 at 07:58

naveen nani

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This is just a list of screen commands, not an answer to this specific question. – Jeffrey Bosboom Dec 29 '14 at 08:21
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These list of commands helped me resolve my issue, thank you for posting – Adrian Torrie Jul 05 '15 at 06:13

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 23 '15 at 14:14

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This worked for me very well. Get the screen id via:

screen -r

or

screen -ls

then kill the screen: kill -9 <screenID> it now becomes a dead screen, then wipe it out with: screen -wipe

answered Sep 23 '15 at 14:14

TheWiz

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Cugomastik · Answer 4 · 2021-01-28T09:14:56.180

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From Screen User's Manual ;

screen -d -r "screenName"

Reattach a session and if necessary detach it first

edited Jan 28 '21 at 09:14

answered Jan 27 '21 at 21:40

Cugomastik

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This should be the accepted answer. Nost easy solution without loosing the screen session! Thanks! – Tobias Gaertner Nov 01 '21 at 06:56
what does that -d and -r do here ? – Santosh Jul 05 '22 at 13:26
Reattach a session and if necessary detach it first. – Cugomastik Jul 12 '22 at 09:17

seralouk · Answer 5 · 2022-01-26T13:48:13.250

3

To kill a detached screen use this from the terminal:

screen -X -S "SCEEN_NAME" quit

If you are attached, then use (from the terminal and inside the screen):

exit

edited Jan 26 '22 at 13:48

answered Sep 27 '19 at 16:45

seralouk

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score 1 · Answer 6 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:30

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You could create a function to kill all existing sessions. take a look at Kill all detached screen sessions

to list all active sessions use screen -r

when listed, select with your mouse the session you are interested in and paste it. like this

screen -r

edited May 23 '17 at 10:30

Community

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answered Apr 26 '14 at 01:39

andreskwan

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score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 27 '17 at 19:54

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Suppose your screen id has a pattern. Then you can use the following code to kill all the attached screen at once.

result=$(screen -ls | grep 'pattern_of_screen_id' -o)
for i in $result; 
do      
    `screen -X -S $i quit`;
done

answered Sep 27 '17 at 19:54

Md Kauser Ahmmed

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score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Feb 11 '13 at 04:57

0

i usually don't name my screen instances, so this might not be useful, but did you try screen -r without the 'myscreen' part? usually for me, screen -r will show the PIDs of each screen then i can reattach with screen -d -r <PID>

answered Feb 11 '13 at 04:57

Hutch

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Yes, that was the first command I tried. but it didn't respond. I tried to open as root user but the screen was not even detected for root user account. – Slowcoder Feb 11 '13 at 04:58

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Dec 21 '18 at 07:14

0

You can find the process id of the attached running screen. I found it same as the session id which you can get by command:
screen -ls
And you can use following command to kill that process:
kill [sessionId] or
sudo kill [sessionId]

answered Dec 21 '18 at 07:14

Siddhant

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score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Nov 17 '20 at 05:46

None of the screen commands were killing or reattaching the screen for me. Any screen command would just hang. I found another approach.

Each running screen has a file associated with it in:

/var/run/screen/S-{user_name}

The files in that folder will match the names of the screens when running the screen -list. If you delete the file, it kills the associated running screen (detached or attached).

score -2 · Answer 11 · answered Jul 21 '15 at 10:42

-2

For result find: Click Here

Screen is a full-screen window manager that multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes, typically interactive shells. There is a scrollback history buffer for each virtual terminal and a copy-and-paste mechanism that allows the user to move text regions between windows.

answered Jul 21 '15 at 10:42

HuyLe

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This is not very helpful: it's just part of the man page and a cheat sheet wich the OP has certainly read. – matiasg Jul 21 '15 at 11:10

Kill Attached Screen in Linux

11 Answers11