How do I take a screenshot on a Raspberry Pi running Debian Squeeze and LXDE?

Question

How do I take a screenshot on a Raspberry Pi running Debian Squeeze and LXDE?

Shutter is not installed, print screen doesn't appear to work, screen grab is not installed etc.

Answer 1

apt-get install scrot

Then read the manual for command line options. If you don't want to open a terminal to take a screenshot every time you can create a launcher for it.

Answer 2

I'd use import from ImageMagick:

apt-get install imagemagick

Selection

When invoking import, the only required argument is a filename, e.g.

import screenshot.png

When providing only the output filename, you have to drag around the area you want to capture.

Full screen

If you want to capture the full screen, you have to invoke import is this fashion:

import -window root screenshot.png

More advanced

Being only arguments, it's pretty easy to fit it to your uses:

sleep 2; import -window root ~/Dropbox/screenshot_`date +%F_%H-%M-%S`.png

The above sleeps for 2 seconds, then takes a screenshot and puts it in ~/Dropbox. The screenshot name is appended with the current date and time, e.g. screenshot_2013-02-25_06-42-56.png

If you want even more, have a look at Snapper which does all of this, can create screencasts and has support for copying the results to a remote server, amongst other things.