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From: Andrew Schulman <schulman DOT andrew AT epamail DOT epa DOT gov>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: GNU screen hangs
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:14:11 -0400
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> I occasionally have trouble with screen as well, and as far as I can
> tell, it always happens when trying to create a new screen. =A0(To be
> clear, when I start screen the first time or when I press: ctrl-a c)
> So, it may be that screen itself is not the problem in my case.
> Because this occurs only rarely, I have no idea how to duplicate it,
> and I think disabling any programs that /might/ be interfering would
> be inconclusive at best. =A0If it happens again, is there anything I can
> do that would lead to a proper diagnosis?

I don't know.  Maybe someone else here does.  screen is difficult to debug,
because it uses two communicating processes, one in the foreground to talk
to your terminal, and one in the background to talk to the processes in
each window.

screen in Cygwin has had trouble in the past reattaching to detached
sessions.  It would seem that communication between the two processes
breaks down in some way at detachment or reattachment, but I don't know how
to debug that, especially when the problem is intermittent and fairly rare.

For whatever reasons, such reports are less common in the last few years,
but there have been a few.

> I should probably also point out that when I work with cygwin, I work
> almost exclusively with text-based programs.  So, I rarely have a need
> for X, and I use a command prompt window. =A0Is there a better terminal
> for those circumstances?

First, as /usr/share/doc/screen/README.Cygwin explains, if you're using a
DOS terminal, you need to set CYGWIN=3Dtty in the environment before you
start your terminal, or you're likely to have problems reattaching to
detached screen sessions.

Personally, I much prefer PuTTYcyg.  rxvt and MinTTY are also popular, but
they both require X.  You might also like Poderosa
(http://en.poderosa.org/).

Good luck,
Andrew.

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