Screen: keep processes running despite losing a network connection

Screen is a full-screen window manager with VT100/ANSI terminal emulation. It multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes (e.g shells). It keep the processes/shells running despite a drop in network connection. After connection to a remote server using telnet or ssh, execute screen command. Following command options can then be used to manipulate screen sessions.

Ctrl + a + c: creates a new screen session
Ctrl + a + n: switch to next screen session
Ctrl + a + p: switch to previous screen session
Ctrl + a + d: detach from a screen session without killing running shells or processes

Typing exit within a screen shell closes a screen session. If a connection drops, active screen session will continue running on the remote server. Log back to the remote server, execute 'screen -ls' to view currently running sessions and connect to one of them, using 'screen -r [session id]'.

Screen is available on Linux, BSD unix and Mac OS X.

The other method to continue running remote processes is to use 'nohup [command name] &'. However it runs the command in the background and not interactively.