Pipe screen buffer to another command?

Question

I can't seem to find anything on this so, is there a way to pipe everything from a screen window into another command. I have a server running in screen (not the best idea, but the only way for the server atm), and want to parse the output (while it is running, is it possible to take everything printed to that detached screen into another command?

Thanks, Max

Answer 1

If you need to log output of a running screen session, do the following:

1. Attach to the session.

2. Press your Prefix key (Ctrl+A on an unchanged setup), then :, enter logfile <filename>.

3. Again Prefix :, enter logfile flush <interval in seconds>.

4. Prefix :, enter log on.

screen will now log all output to the file <filename>, every <interval> seconds. You can tail -f that file to process the output.

You can skip steps 2 to 4 and just press Prefix, then H. The defaults will be screenlog.n for <filename> and 10 seconds for <interval>.

Note that the file can grow quite large if you have a lot of output to handle.

Answer 2

Something like this perhaps:

$ screen -d -m sh -c "/path/to/my/exec | tee output.log"