Everyone uses screen right ? If not, what's wrong with you crazy person ?

Also everyone at some point or the other realises that its worth getting a decent screenrc in place. So did I, many years back. Essentially the screenrc lets you setup a few things about how you want screen to look and work. A config file, yes. And here is what I currently use:

caption string "%?%F%{= Bk}%? %C%A %D %d-%m-%Y %{= kB} %t%= %?%F%{= Bk}%:%{= wk}%? %n "
hardstatus alwayslastline
hardstatus string '%{= kG}[ %{G}%H %{g}][%= %{= kw}%?%-Lw%?%{r}(%{W}%n*%f%t%?(%u)%?%{r})%{w}%?%+Lw%?%?%= %{g}][%{B} %d/%m %{W}%c %{g}]'

You can download it here : http://www.karan.org/stuff/MyScreenRc : remember to move it to ~/.screenrc .

What you see here is the result of what came from many iterations of changes. I remember in 2006 my screenrc put up a 3 line display with everything that anyone would ever need, including load on a machine, number of unread emails, days-for-present-sprint to end etc. And to be honest, while most of that is good to know I think the only things one needs on the console are : hostname, screen windows and labels for those and finally the time. On a nice dull background so its not in your face too much. Which is exactly what my existing screenrc is setup to be.

One interesting thing is that often when pairing with me or when people see my console shell they would ask why bother with the hostname, specially since you should know from the shell prompt what machine you are on. Well, yes - but then that does not work out too well when you start cascading shells between machines. Eg: machine 1 -> machine 2 -> machine 3. It can get tricky, but because I have my status bar setup on each shell - here is what my terminal looks like in that case:

So you can easily see how the screens are stacked up and on what machine with screen windows on each machine. Quite like that.

So do you have a screenrc setup ? tell me about it. If not - then well, this one here should be a good place to start from - and tell me if you like it, hate it or think it can be improved in some way.

- KB