Gnu Screen and 10.5

Question

Gnu Screen and 10.5

So, does anyone else have problems with Gnu Screen and OSX 10.5? If I use the box-shipped version, my PATH is completely ignored, and it doesn't understand deflogin or login in my .screenrc file.

If I use the macports version, I get UTMP problems and unless I manually create /var/run/utmp, eventually /etc/sudoers and passwd gets updated, and UID 501 is no longer in the passwd file!

iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.3)

Posted on Jun 22, 2008 12:33 AM

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Answer 1

Bill Scott

Level 6

11,465 points

Jun 22, 2008 5:37 AM in response to James E. Bailey

Yes, I have noticed it too. I've come up with hackish workarounds but no good ones.

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Answer 2

Jun 22, 2008 4:18 PM in response to Bill Scott

How hackish and what are they? I would really like screen to work.
My current workaround is to create /var/run/utmp before I start screen and use the macports version. Because that's a lot easier to deal with than not having my $PATH be correct

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Answer 3

Jun 23, 2008 12:34 AM in response to James E. Bailey

of all the…

Creating and configuring ~/.bashrc solved all my problems…

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Answer 4

Jun 23, 2008 12:35 AM in response to James E. Bailey

the $PATH needs to be set in ~/.bashrc for it to be read.

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Answer 5

Bill Scott

Level 6

11,465 points

Jun 24, 2008 10:10 AM in response to James E. Bailey

That's actually not screen's fault.

When bash starts, it will read either .profile_bash or .bashrc but not both, depending whether it is a shell process or subprocess.

On X-window based systems, one of these (I can never remember which) gets read when the root window starts, and then the other gets read when every sub-process starts. On OS X this approach breaks down.

There is a slightly different bug I have been seeing, and I think it is due to multi-threading. Basically the screen session starts before the $PATH gets entries like /sw/bin or /opt/local/bin set. I never figured out how, but my hackish workaround is simply to start screen and then invoke the process I want, rather than to do it all in one command. (This gets annoying if you are writing shell scripts that invoke screen).

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