Question

I’ve recently started using GNU Screen but have run into a very annoying problem.

In any screen window if I press the left arrow key or backspace when there is nothing typed at the prompt the screen seems to refresh, causing a slight flicker. After typing some text at the prompt using the backspace or left arrow won’t cause the flicker (at least until the first character in the prompt is reached).

Anyone seen this before?

Answer 1

That’s not a problem. It’s a feature. It’s supposed to behave like that when "visual bell" is enabled in your terminal. Which it is, by default I guess.

Take a look at this document. There are three properties in the file that relates to visual bell. You can change that in ~/.screenrc

vbell_msg "bell: window ~%"     # Message for visual bell
vbellwait 2                     # Seconds to pause the screen for visual bell
vbell off                       # Turns visual bell off

Try setting vbell property to off.

Also, I would recommend you ask the same question in ServerFault. I am sure you’ll get way better answers over there. To access the site, since it’s in private beta, check this blog entry.