please don't bother me with a prompt about profiles

Is it so bad to "just hit enter", and you get the default, "plain" profile?

You are prompted once per host. But you are "only" prompted once.
You can disable the prompting by touching ~/.screenrc-profile, or
seeding it correctly. Would it help if there were a low debconf
configuration parameter to set this, and allow for preseeding?

In designing this, we tried to follow the model we implemented for
sensible-editor in Intrepid. Defaulting to "nano" as the system-wide
editor was seen as rather debilitating to power-Ubuntu users. So we
created select-editor to allow for per-user editor selection, in an
interactive manner that allowed a user to make a selection on first
invocation (and didn't require them to use an editor to set their
preference).

:-Dustin

The bug should be against the screen-profiles package, which provides a diversion for /usr/bin/screen which is responsible for the prompt. Reassigning appropriately.

:-Dustin

To answer your second question,
> I mean, what makes profiles different from any of the other hundreds
> of optional features screen has that we don't prompt them about?

Screen-profiles provides 2 themed profiles (ubuntu-dark, ubuntu-light) that expose a number of screen's features to casual screen users.

A task bar at the bottom shows: open windows, OS-version, reboot-required, updates-available, system-load, cpu-info, memory-info, and date/time information.

To accomplish this "optional feature", the casual screen user would need to divine:
caption always "%{wK}%?%-Lw%?%{bw}%n*%f %t%?(%u)%?%{wK}%?%+Lw%?"
hardstatus string '%{+b kr}\%{= ky}o%{=b kY}/%{=b Kw} %100` %{= Kw} %= %{=b bW}%102`%{= Kw} %{=b rW}%101`%{= Kw} %{= Wg}%108`%{= Kw} %{= Yk}%106`%{= Kw} %{= Kw}%104`%{=b cW}%103`%{= Kw} %{=b gW}%105`,%107`%{= Kw} %Y-%m-%d %0c:%s'

For a screenshot, see:
 * http://people.ubuntu.com/~kirkland/Screenshot-ec2-cost.png
(note that this was running in an EC2 instance, where an estimate of the cost of the instance also appears in the status bar)

As well as writing the helper scripts, and defining their backtick bindings.

Furthermore, these bundled screen-profiles provide several useful keybindings, using the more-accessible F-keys:
F2 Create a new window | F6 Detach from the session
F3 Go to the prev window | F7 Enter scrollback mode
F4 Go to the next window | F8 View all keybindings
F5 Close current window | F9 Configure screen-profiles
                                             | F12 Lock this terminal

We on the Ubuntu server team believe that these presets make screen a more usable window manager for the Ubuntu server, without forcing longing, "plain" screen users to adopt this heavily customized profile. The opt-out is as easy as simply pressing enter at the prompt:

Select a screen profile:
 1. plain
 2. ubuntu-dark
 3. ubuntu-light
Choose: 1-3 [1]:

If you still believe this question is inappropriate, what would you think about taking the question to the ubuntu-devel mailing list, and asking for more opinions?

:-Dustin

How about skipping the question if a .screenrc exists already? This should strike a balance between discoverability and not being as annoying to people that don't want to see the question.

elmo-

I've implemented Kees' suggestion, and uploaded an updated package. This doesn't solve the issue as you've requested, but I'm hoping that perhaps it strikes the appropriate balance?

If not, please reopen the bug and we'll continue the dialog. Thanks!

:-Dustin

This bug was fixed in the package screen-profiles - 1.25-0ubuntu1

---------------
screen-profiles (1.25-0ubuntu1) jaunty; urgency=low

  * screen: don't prompt with select-screen-profile, if ~/.screenrc exists
    and ~/.screenrc-profile does not, LP: #330322

 -- Dustin Kirkland <email address hidden> Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:41:24 -0600

I would also skip asking to select a profile if screen is run with '-m' option. Or may be, when $TERM is not set.

I had a headless remote system behind a NAT which ran something like 'screen -d -m ssh -R ... exthost' in its startup scripts (more exactly, in cron @reboot line for certain user), to eastablish a port forwarding so that I could access it inside NAT connecting from 'exthost'.

Once I had upgraded from Intrepid to Jaunty, having installed recommended screen-profiles package during the course.
To play well by your current rules, I had either to run screen from under that user and select a profile for further use,
or, to remove screen-profiles package before a reboot.

Anyway, then I was not so omniscient and experienced in upgrade to Jaunty and all surprises this ensues,
so after the reboot I have lost this screen-ssh which once made reverse tunnel for me,
losing the access to the system 120 km away from me,
and there is not much people whom I could ask to do the proper thing at this place.

So, I would like very much is screen-profile wrapper don't ask to select a profile is there is '-m' option in screen command line,
or if there is no $TERM variable in the environment.

Don't know if it is worth to create another bug for my request, hope that reopening this one will suffice.

Please don't beat me much, only consider my humble additional request. Thank you in advance.

Marking 'won't fix' against screen-profiles. The package has been renamed to 'byobu'. I'm marking it against that package. I believe that this is fixed in karmic. I'll do a bit more testing and ensure that it's fixed there.

:-Dustin

This should be fixed in the next upload of byobu to Karmic.

Also, I have a fix for screen-profiles in Jaunty. I'll will propose an SRU to jaunty-updates.

I will test if any arguments have been passed to screen. If so, I won't bother with profile selection at that time.

# If the user is running screen with some arguments, but has not selected
# their profile yet, don't bother them with profile selection at this time
if [ $# -gt 0 -a ! -h "$HOME/.screen-profiles/profile" ]; then
        exec /usr/bin/screen.real "$@"
        exit $?
fi

:-Dustin

Attaching the proposed debdiff for review by SRU team. Uploading to jaunty-proposed. Subscribing SRU team.

:-Dustin

This bug was fixed in the package byobu - 2.6-0ubuntu1

---------------
byobu (2.6-0ubuntu1) karmic; urgency=low

  * byobu, debian/postrm, debian/preinst, debian/rules, screen-launcher:
    remove the dpkg diversion on /usr/bin/screen as this has proven
    to be controversial; users will need to call "byobu" to launch
    a byobu-style screen session; LP: #330322
  * bin/network-*: set rate=0 when rate is negative (ie, on startup)
  * bin/temp-*: better support for temperature zones, LP: #380885
  * byobu: If the user is running byobu with some arguments, but has
    not selected their profile yet, don't bother them with profile
    selection at this time, LP: #330322
  * screen-launcher-install: handle non-interactive shells correctly,
    LP: #380761
  * keybindings/common: add keybindings, @=config, R=reload, LP: #380944
  * po/ru.po: added russian translation, thanks Slava, LP: #380977

 -- Dustin Kirkland <email address hidden> Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:11:22 -0500

Accepted screen-profiles into jaunty-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

My init scripts work again! Thanks.

This bug was fixed in the package screen-profiles - 1.44-0ubuntu1.2

---------------
screen-profiles (1.44-0ubuntu1.2) jaunty-proposed; urgency=low

  * screen: If the user is running screen with some arguments, but has
    not selected their profile yet, don't bother them with profile
    selection at this time, LP: #330322

 -- Dustin Kirkland <email address hidden> Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:24:42 -0500