Grab text from detached screen

Question

I am working on a collectd plugin to monitor a program I have running in a detached screen session. This program constantly updates the terminal with its status by replacing its old status (similar to programs like top, etc).

I would like to be able to grab what it is currently "showing" and parse it to get the current status of the program. I know there is a way to send text to a screen, but is there a way to grab it? Alternatively, is there another program/approach to accomplish what I am looking for?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 11 '13 at 16:59

1

That'd be the hardcopy command.

screen -x yoursession -X hardcopy /path/to/your/file

Would cap what the terminal is currently showing, without backlog, to the given file.

answered Apr 11 '13 at 16:59

frostschutz

48,978

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

1

Is something like

 screen -Xx <screen_nr> hardcopy outfile.txt

what you are looking for?

Also take a look here.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Community

1

answered Apr 11 '13 at 17:01

Runium

28,811

Grab text from detached screen

2 Answers2