Screen - Kill All

Introduction

The screen command is a versatile tool that allows you to have multiple terminal sessions within a single terminal window. It provides a virtual terminal that can be detached and reattached to the running sessions. This makes it especially useful for long-running processes or remote sessions.

One powerful feature of screen is the ability to control and manage multiple sessions simultaneously. This includes the ability to kill all running sessions with a single command. In this article, we will explore how to achieve this using the screen killall command.

Prerequisites

• Basic knowledge of the Linux command line interface.
• Familiarity with shell scripting (Bash).
• screen command installed (can be installed using package managers like apt or yum).

screen killall Command

The screen killall command is used to terminate all the running screen sessions. It sends a terminate command to each session, forcing them to exit.

Here is the syntax of the screen killall command:

screen -X -S sessionname quit

• -X option specifies that you want to send a command to a running session.
• -S sessionname specifies the name of the session to target.
• quit is the command that tells screen to terminate the session.

Note: The session name is optional. If you omit it, screen will consider the current session as the target.

How to Kill All Running Screen Sessions

You can use the following steps to kill all the running screen sessions:

1. Open a terminal window.

2. Run the following command to list all the running screen sessions:

   screen -ls
   

   This command will display a list of running screen sessions along with their session IDs and socket paths.

3. Identify the session(s) you want to kill. Note down the session ID(s) or the socket path(s) for later use.

4. Run the following command to kill the identified session(s):

   screen -X -S sessionname quit
   

   Replace sessionname with the session ID(s) or the socket path(s) from step 3.

   If you want to kill all running sessions, you can omit the session name. The command will then terminate the current session.

Example Usage

To kill all running screen sessions, you can use the following command:

screen -X -S quit

This will terminate all the running sessions.

Conclusion

The screen killall command provides a simple and efficient way to terminate all running screen sessions. This can be useful when you want to clean up or end all sessions quickly. Remember, use this command with caution as it forcefully terminates the sessions, potentially causing data loss or disruption.

To learn more about the screen command and its various functionalities, refer to the official documentation or check out the help section by running man screen or screen --help in your terminal.