Screen kill session

Introduction

As a programmer, you might have encountered situations where you need to run a background process on a remote server or a Linux machine. In such cases, using the Screen command can be helpful, as it allows you to run multiple terminal sessions in a single window. However, when you no longer need a session, you can terminate it using the screen kill command.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to use the screen kill command to terminate a session and release the resources it was using.

Prerequisites

To follow this tutorial, you need to have a basic understanding of the Linux command line and the Screen command.

How to Kill a Screen Session

To terminate a Screen session, you need to know its ID. You can list all active Screen sessions by running the following command:

screen -ls

This command lists all the active Screen sessions with their IDs, their attached status, and their session name. For example:

There is a screen on:
	7216.ttys001.hostname	(Detached)
1 Socket in /var/run/screen/S-username.

Here, the ID of the session is 7216. To kill this session, run the command:

screen -S 7216 -X quit

This command sends the quit command to the Screen session with ID 7216, which terminates the session and closes all its windows.

If the Screen session is attached to a terminal window, you can also terminate it by pressing the CTRL+A key combination, followed by the K key. This will prompt you to confirm the termination and close the session.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you learned how to use the screen kill command to terminate a Screen session. This command is useful when you want to release the resources used by a session or when you want to terminate a process running in the session. We hope you found this tutorial helpful. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.

Note: Remember to always use the screen kill command with caution, as it terminates the session and all its windows without any warning or confirmation.