SCO Unix ® FAQ section

Unix, Xenix and ODT General FAQ

How can I reconnect to a disconnected session?

Whether it's a modem a vpn that drops, or just accidentally closing a Windows emulator, sometimes you lose your connection. Users get kicked out, and that screws up their software.

The usual answer to that is to install "screen" because it will let you reconnect.

Unfortunately "screen" is a Swiss army knife, and it does way too much, including terminal emulation that you apparently can't avoid - it wants to be a vt100 terminal and that's all there is to it: the darn thing even watches your function keys and oh so helpfully translates them to vt100 sequences! Lousy idea if your software doesn't like vt100.

If it DOES like vt100, screen may be just what you want.

I found that "dislocate" is part of the "expect" package and it does just what I want: allows you to reconnect to a session. It doesn't do anything else, and that's good.

Of course if you DO want multiple windows and everything else screen offers, it's a great tool.

To use screen, or dislocate, you need to run them BEFORE you get disconnected.

 screen yourprog
 dislocate yourprog
 

Then, when you want to reconnect:

 screen -D -R
 dislocate -l
 

Binaries of both screen and expect are available from Skunkware for SCO and of course easily available for Linux..

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