Persistent Terminals For a Dedicated Computing Box?

Theovon writes "I just built a high-end quad-core Linux PC dedicated to number-crunching. Its job is to sit in the corner with no keyboard, mouse, or monitor and do nothing but compute (genetic algorithms, neural nets, and other research). My issue is that I would like to have something like persistent terminal sessions. I've considered using Xvnc in a completely headless configuration (some useful documentation here, here, here, and here). However, for most of my uses, this is overkill. Total waste of memory and compute time. However, if I decided to run FPGA synthesis software under WINE, this will become necessary. Unfortunately, I can't quite figure out how to get persistent X11 session where I'm automatically logged in (or can stay logged in), while maintaining enough security that I don't mind opening the VNC port on my firewall (with a changed port number, of course). I'm also going to check out Xpra, but I've only just heard about it and have no idea how to use it. For the short term, the main need is just terminals. I'd like to be able to connect and see how something is going. One option is to just run things with nohup and then login and 'tail -f' to watch the log file. I've also heard of screen, but I'm unfamiliar with it. Have other Slashdot users encountered this situation? What did you use? What's hard, what's easy, and what works well?"

What I read

[krappie]

"I really want this feature. I've heard of this program that's made for exactly the feature that I want, but I'm unfamiliar with it. HELP ME SLASHDOT YOU'RE MY ONLY HOPE!!1!"

Re:Screen works welll

[lostguru]

vi?

Re:screen

[Yogiz]

Slackware distro:
cd /usr/src/tar
wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/screen/screen-4.0.2.tar.gz [gnu.org]
cd ..
tar -xzf tar/screen-4.0.2.tar.gz
cd screen-4.0.2
CFLAGS=" -O2 -march=pentium-m -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"./configure --prefix=/usr
make
mkdir /tmp/screen_install
make DESTDIR=/tmp/screen_install install
cd /tmp/screen_install
mkdir install
vim install/slack-desc
makepkg screen-4.0.2-i686-1.tgz
installpkg screen-4.0.2-i686-1.tgz
cp screen-4.0.2-i686-1.tgz /usr/src/packages
cd ..
rm -r screen_install

What? Difficult? What are you talking about, that's the only good way.