I use screen as my window manager through putty. Screen has been great, but I need a way to increase my buffer when I run commands. I have no buffer when I scroll up, no std out is saved beyond my window size on any terminal.
How can I increase this I can't seem to find an option in the commands? Ctrl + a ? doesn't seem to have what I am looking for.
I actually figured this out after looking through the man page. Setting the screen buffer inside .screenrc does work, but you can change it inside your screen session.
Ctrl-a + : and typing
scrollback 1000
gives you a 1000 line buffer.
You can also set the default number of scrollback lines in .screenrc by using
defscrollback 1000
Then entering copy mode will let you scroll around.
.screenrc make this the most useful answer
scrollback does not work in .screenrc, only defscrollback does.
Commented
Jun 6, 2019 at 11:23
Do Ctrl + a : then enter scrollback 1234 sets your buffer to 1234 lines. You enter scrollback mode ("copy mode") with Ctrl + a Esc, then move in vi-style, leave copy mode with another Esc
You actually do have something of a buffer, but it's invisible to most terminal emulators (which is why e. g. scroll bars don't appear to work). One way to get at it is to enter copy mode (Ctrl-A,[ followed by arrow keys, PgUp, et cetera). The size of this buffer can be configured in .screenrc. You you an change its allocation inside your screen session:
Ctrl-a + : and typing
scrollback 1000
gives you a 1000 line buffer.
If you want to change screen settings globally (for all users) then you can edit /etc/screenrc (Ubuntu). File path might be different on other distros.
In your case add the following lines to the file:
# define a bigger scrollback, default is 100 lines
defscrollback 1024
