kill a screen session

Question

I'm trying to kill a screen session. I noticed a lot of other related questions, but none of those answers are working for me. I am trying to kill the following session:

screen -ls
There is a screen on:
    23520.pts-6.porkypig    (09/30/2013 02:49:47 PM)    (Detached)
1 Socket in /var/run/screen/S-root.

screen -r 23520.pts-6.porkypig

Now I am in the session. According to the documentation:

http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/manual/screen.html#Quit

I am supposed to press "control a" and then "control \". I do that and nothing happens.

Another solution said to press Ctrl+a and type :quit. However, again it doesn't do anything. In fact, pressing control+a, absolutely nothing happens afterwards except a message "No Other Window"

in screen v4.x, to kill all sessions, ps aux | grep "SCREEN" | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill — Fredrick Gauss, Nov 28 '14 at 07:33
For the record, you can just do screen -r porkypig or screen -r 23520, rather than having to include the full string. Screen names are supposed to make things easier, not more complicated. — Mikkel, Sep 26 '16 at 14:52
For the record, you could also do screen -r if there's only one screen listed — Ashique Razak, Apr 12 '23 at 20:42

score 250 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 16 '21 at 08:04

250

Identify the name of the session:

 $ screen -ls

Close a session:

$ screen -XS <session-id> quit

Rationale: -X = Execute command, -S session PID to execute on
Example: screen -XS 20411 quit
Source: innaM's Answer

edited Jul 16 '21 at 08:04

Miladiouss

321

answered Jul 05 '14 at 09:25

shgnInc

4,003

1

This was pretty simple. You can simplify it even more by combining the -X -S with -XS – AJ Acevedo Nov 10 '16 at 03:34
5

You should give credit to innaM answer if you copy it – Martin Thoma May 01 '17 at 14:47
1

This answer is most probably the most straightforward, quick yet efficient one. – avia Jul 11 '21 at 10:01
Is much better than the accepted answer, and it's working! – Dmitriy Popov Sep 13 '22 at 22:10
1

i like this one too. plus can always throw it in a loop to get rid of all sessions if needed: for session in $(screen -ls | grep -oP '\d+\.\w+' | cut -d. -f1); do screen -S "${session}" -X quit; done. – Danny Blaker May 08 '23 at 06:46

score 223 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 14 '20 at 00:14

223

first you need to re attach to the screen session
screen -r 23520 as you have done. Then press ctrl + a and then a k and press y when it asks if you really want to kill the session

Source

edited Mar 14 '20 at 00:14

Ben

998

answered Oct 09 '13 at 22:25

Jacob Minshall

2,656

2

This works if there is a problem with a process running inside the screen, but not if there is a problem with screen itself. That is the case 99% of the time, and has the added benefit of only affecting a single window within the screen rather than terminating all windows. – Mikkel Sep 26 '16 at 14:51
2

It is to kill a window, not a session – Eric Wang Aug 10 '19 at 00:47
Is there a way to kill the session without having to answer the prompt? I'd rather skip the y part. – birgersp Feb 26 '21 at 07:32
1

Ctrl + a then UPPERCASE K, then y – user2965003 Mar 22 '22 at 10:10
2

Ctrl + A + K doesn't work for me. – Peyman Nov 25 '22 at 17:48

Brian Thomas · Answer 3 · 2021-03-03T19:40:26.450

17

This command will kill all screen sessions, if that is desired:

So with all those official suggestions, I have one here that i feel is easier, and just as effective, and kind of more straight forward:

pkill screen

Who wants to go into an unknown and un-needed screen just to press in a couple commands that most might barely remember? This avoids going into it at all, and kills it straight off.

Plus, if you have more than one, this will take them all in one fell swoop.

edited Mar 03 '21 at 19:40

answered Mar 19 '16 at 04:05

Brian Thomas

315

7

Note that this will kill all running screens, which may or may not be what you want. – Mikkel Sep 26 '16 at 14:57
2

Not a good choice. I've been doing it for some time. Sometimes it causes bad behaviors (e.g. logging out from your user account immediately). Also, as @Mikkel mentioned, it could cause to close all your screens, which would not be what you want. Sometimes you need to keep running some (e.g. some are running by system) and stop some other screens. – MAChitgarha Sep 04 '18 at 05:14

score 12 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 15 '18 at 21:35

Like you, I wanted to kill my screen session and found the documentation unhelpful. Convinced that there must be a keyboard shortcut, I found that
ctrl + a then \
works

I then get the prompt: "Really quit and kill all your windows [y\n]"

I am not sure why the documentation says ctrl + a then ctrl + \. That doesn't do anything for me.

score 10 · Answer 5 · edited Sep 06 '14 at 13:59

10

This will kill all the detached screens:

screen -ls | grep detached | cut -d. -f1 | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill

This will kill all screens, attached or detached

screen -ls | grep pts | cut -d. -f1 | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill

edited Sep 06 '14 at 13:59

Adaephon

4,891

answered Sep 06 '14 at 10:12

user324207

101

Is the awk step really necessary? – Martin J.H. Jul 27 '22 at 08:05
I am an grep/awk/xargs noob and always will be. But based on your answer I built my own shell alias. Just in case this may be useful for someone: alias killscreen='screen -ls | grep -i attached | awk '\''{print $1}'\'' | xargs -L1 bash -c '\''screen -XS $0 quit'\''' (kills all attached sessions) – Matthias W. Dec 25 '23 at 12:23

score 5 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 17 '22 at 01:33

5

You can use this to kill a session

screen -X -S <name> kill

answered Dec 17 '22 at 01:33

Furkan ozturk

151

score 4 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 20 '21 at 10:58

4

we can also use the exit command to terminating screen

answered Jan 20 '21 at 10:58

Hiren Makwana

141

Easiest and most straightforward approach! You will, of course, first need to reattach to the screen session. – gillesC Jul 16 '21 at 08:36

score 3 · Answer 8 · answered Dec 21 '18 at 07:18

You can find the process id of the attached running screen. I found it same as the session id which you can get by command:
screen -ls
And you can use following command to kill that process:
kill [sessionId] or
sudo kill [sessionId]
You can kill the screen even if it is attached on some other terminal window.

score 3 · Answer 9 · answered Sep 26 '16 at 14:47

I encountered this problem when updating screen. The screen command would hang when attempting to reattach the session, regardless of how many -D or -R I added to the command. However, screen -ls conveniently provides the pid of the session, allowing you to intervene using the following:

10:42 user ~ $ screen -ls
There is a screen on:
        5730.my_screen     (Detached)
1 Socket in /tmp/screens/S-user.

10:42 user ~ $ sudo kill 5730

10:43 user ~ $ screen -ls
No Sockets found in /tmp/screens/S-user.

(This is similar to Brian Thomas's answer, but his will kill all running screen sessions, which may not be what you want if you have multiple screens open but only one misbehaving.)

After 6 hours breaking my head all over internet... yours was the only answer that worked. Thanks mate! — kRazzy R, Sep 30 '17 at 06:43

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Sep 19 '19 at 13:18

0

Press ctrl+d to kill screen window. Repeat this until you kill all screen windows. Once you ran out all windows screen will kill the session and terminating. Shortest solution if you not having many windows

answered Sep 19 '19 at 13:18

Dilushan

1

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Feb 04 '21 at 21:06

0

You can just simply type exit while in a recording mode, I found out it to be most convenient as it directly exits the running screen.

answered Feb 04 '21 at 21:06

Utkarsh

1

score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Mar 01 '22 at 12:40

0

Simply, use the exit command inside a screen window and if you have a running process press control + z before that.

answered Mar 01 '22 at 12:40

Yavar Yeganeh

1

This doesn't answer the question (how to kill a screen session, as opposed how to exit normally) and it doesn't expand on the other answers. A good answer might cover the normal exiting procedure and then document a few ways you can kill screen if that doesn't work. – Coljac Mar 02 '22 at 22:38

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Feb 10 '23 at 01:23

I believe what is being asked is how to 'quit' a screen session from within screen itself. This would kill all open terminals in the session and leave the user at the prompt for the parent terminal. The session can be suspended from within using CTRL-A, CTRL-Z. But this creates a a problem I'm trying to avoid which is leaving a bunch of opened screen sessions over time and then not knowing which ones are truly active and which ones I should have closed.

After lots of looking, I believe there is no way to do this. Killing them using the PID method is ok, but if there are many sessions open, some of which I might be using, I don't always know which ones to kill.

So what I do when I'm truly done with a screen session is to repeatedly hit CTRL-d to close each terminal individuly until the session completely exits.

This is the best solution I've found.

kill a screen session

13 Answers13