this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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Screen is a wonderful thing. (lemmy-ui.nowsci.com:33443)
submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/linux
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I use Ollama with continue.dev in code-server, and I wanted a way to hit Cntrl-Shift-Alt-T to get a "top" of sorts that would show CPU, IO, GPU, loaded models, and logs, all in one place quickly.

Set up the below screenrc file and created the shortcut above in Debian. Tab switches between CPU and IO, and Cntrl-a q quits all screens and closes the Gnome shell.

Screenrc:

termcapinfo xterm* ti@:te@
startup_message off
defscrollback 10000

bind q eval "kill" "quit"
caption always "%{= rw}%-w%{= KW}%n %t%{-}%+w"
defbce on

# Start htop and focus
screen -t "HTop" htop
focus

# Split horizontally to put nvtop under htop
split
focus
screen -t "NVTop" nvtop

# Split vertically to put ollama next to nvtop
split -v
focus
screen -t "Ollama PS" watch -n5 'docker exec -ti ai-ollama ollama ps'

# Split horizontally to put logs underneath ps
split
focus
screen -t "Ollama logs" bash -c "docker logs -f --tail 100 ai-ollama | grep -Ev '\"/api/ps\"|\"/\"'"

# Resize PS, then get back to logs
focus up
resize -v 6
focus down

# Get back to htop
focus

The atop script that runs with Cntrl-Alt-Shift-T:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

if [ "${1}" = "new" ]; then
    gnome-terminal --geometry=200x50+0+0 --maximize -- /data/system/bin/atop
else
    screen -c /data/system/setup/common/screenrc-status
fi

Happy to share my htop config as well if anyone wants it.

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[–] anzo 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Nice setup! You crafted like a grafana dashboard there, lol.

Btw... aren't you concerned that htop uses 10% CPU? I was, and then swirched to use btm (cargo install bottom) because the F key freezes the metrics.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Thanks! That's 10% of one of 16 threads right after it starts, so not really worried. I will take a look at btm, though, assuming it will also do IO.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

For anyone who wonder what this is, GNU Screen is a terminal multiplexer similar to tmux.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

My how the turntables! This used to go the other way 😅👴

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

It should; screen is older, and tmux was a new alternative to try to address screen's deficiencies. It's still more correct to say "tmux is like screen."

There's also dvtm, also newer than screen.

I was a longtime screen user before switching to tmux, which is IMHO categorically better. I tried dvtm for a few months, but you have to pair it with something else to get close to tmux, and I found it fussy and difficult.

Then there are a bunch of terminals with built in multiplexors, which baffles me: it binds you to a specific terminal, loses all of the benefits of persistent sessions, and can't be used remotely over ssh. It's not clear to me why people build or use those.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Yea, I tried to switch to tmux, but.. I'm old. Hah

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

I really like screen for simple stuff and for connecting to serial consoles. I just rely on my window manager to handle all the splitting and stuff, so I don't need the power that tmux has.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

This is really cool. Nice implementation

[–] robinm 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I've exensively used screen, tmux and zellij, and all 3 are fantastic workflow enabler. I can't recommend enough to take the time learn either one, especially if you work over ssh.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Screen and tmux work well together too

[–] smoredahl 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

screen and parallel are my two workhorses.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

parallel is one of those things I never seem to find a use for. I've used it a few times for things like running two functions, but that's about it. What have you used it for that made sense?

[–] smoredahl 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Well I'm a researcher, so I'm commonly running experiments on lots of inputs. I make scripts to run the experiments that take command line parameters, and then use parallel to run all of my experiments on all of my inputs under all configurations. It's very nice when you need to try all combos of a bunch of parameters, since by default it'll run with every combination of parameters you give it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Ahhh, makes sense. I end up using python or node for similar things, so its probably just because i use multi threading there.

[–] smoredahl 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Fair enough! For what it's worth, parallel provides a lot of really nice control mechanisms to fine tune how your jobs are scheduled (e.g., only start a new job when there's X amount of memory available), saving stdout and stderr to log files, running jobs on remote hosts, even saving results to a SQL database.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Very cool. Love finding new CLI commands to use. I've been in terminals since the days of Solaris, so it's rare I find something unique to use these days. Usually it's just something slightly better than the old ways so it's switching for the sake of that. Though for some reason tmux never stuck for me.