How do I increase the scrollback buffer in a running screen session?

linux gnu-screen
Zach picture Zach · Jan 6, 2012 · Viewed 156.5k times · Source

Lets say I have a currently running screen session I am interacting with through putty. I've realized that the scrollback buffer is too small and would like to increase it without starting a new screen session.

Is there a way to do this?

Answer

Lee Netherton picture Lee Netherton · Jan 6, 2012

Press Ctrl-a then : and then type

scrollback 10000

to get a 10000 line buffer, for example.

You can also set the default number of scrollback lines by adding

defscrollback 10000

to your ~/.screenrc file.

To scroll (if your terminal doesn't allow you to by default), press Ctrl-a ESC and then scroll (with the usual Ctrl-f for next page or Ctrl-a for previous page, or just with your mouse wheel / two-fingers). To exit the scrolling mode, just press ESC.

Another tip: Ctrl-a i shows your current buffer setting.

Related questions

Kill detached screen session

I learned from somewhere a detached screen can be killed by screen -X -S [session # you want to kill] kill where [session # you want to kill] can be gotten from screen -ls But this doesn't work. Anything wrong? What's the …

Read More
How do I get out of a screen without typing 'exit'?

I screen -r'd into a django server that's running and I can't simply Ctrl-C and exit out of it. Are there any alternative ways to get out of screen? Currently, I manually close the tab on my local PC and …

Read More
How to list running screen sessions?

I have a bunch of servers, on which I run experiments using screen. The procedure is the following : ssh to server XXX launch screen start experiments in a few tabs detach screen disconnect from the server While the experiments are …

Read More