retty(1)

retty is a tiny tool that lets you attach processes running on other terminals. So you were running that mutt outside of screen at your home machine and now wanna check your mail? Attach it with retty, do whatever you want, detach it again and everything is as it was before. You don't have to run them all in screen just in case.

Note that the tool is only very lightly tested, so take some care. Always check first if attaching given application works before you will do it for real.

We send SIGWINCHs around to make the applications recheck window dimensions and redraw the screen - if they don't, try pressing Ctrl-L.

Bugs

• Attaching less doesn't work, we have no idea why yet
• The new terminal does not become the new controlling terminal for the application (this seems to be unfixable without messing with the kernel, unfortunately) - that has all sorts of negative consequences, most importantly: /dev/tty is not the right terminal, leading many applications (e.g. mutt) to misguess window size; pressing Ctrl-C does not deliver a signal to the application, so you can't break it this way (send SIGINT manually)
• You can attach only a single process, so if you want to resume editing a mail in mutt, first you need to attach the editor, then when you are finished quit it and attach mutt

Please send any patches, bugreports, ideas and pizza to pasky@ucw.cz and fis@bofh.cz.

Download

retty-1.0: tar.gz tar.bz2

There is a git repository available at git://repo.or.cz/retty.git.