Problems with automatically starting screen on SSH login

Question

I'm looking at http://taint.org/wk/RemoteLoginAutoScreen to setup my server so it autostarts a screen session when I login via SSH.

I have added the following to my .bashrc:

# Auto-screen invocation. see: http://taint.org/wk/RemoteLoginAutoScreen
# if we're coming from a remote SSH connection, in an interactive session
# then automatically put us into a screen(1) session.   Only try once
# -- if $STARTED_SCREEN is set, don't try it again, to avoid looping
# if screen fails for some reason.
if [ "$PS1" != "" -a "${STARTED_SCREEN:-x}" = x -a "${SSH_TTY:-x}" != x ]
then
  STARTED_SCREEN=1 ; export STARTED_SCREEN
  [ -d $HOME/lib/screen-logs ] || mkdir -p $HOME/lib/screen-logs
  sleep 1
  screen -RR && exit 0
  # normally, execution of this rc script ends here...
  echo "Screen failed! continuing with normal bash startup"
fi
# [end of auto-screen snippet]

The catch is that I always have a detached named screen session running a rails application server. Now when I login I am put into this session.

Is there anyway to modify the above code to not select the session either by name or some other value? If the detached session is the only screen session then I would like to start a new screen session.

Another issue that I am encountering is that when I detach I am completely logged out of my SSH connection as opposed to just leaving the screen session.

Answer 1

Change it to:

if [ -z "$STARTED_SCREEN" ] && [ -n "$SSH_TTY" ]
then
  case $- in
    (*i*)
      STARTED_SCREEN=1; export STARTED_SCREEN
      mkdir -p -- "$HOME/lib/screen-logs"
      screen -RR -S main  ||
        echo >&2 "Screen failed! continuing with normal bash startup"
  esac
fi

That is attach (or create) the screen session called "main" instead of the other one, and don't exit after screen has returned successfully.