Bash – How to ask screen to behave like a standard bash shell

bashgnu-screenxterm

Just learned about the screen command on linux – it is genius. I love it. However, the actual terminal/prompt in screen looks and behaves differently than my standard bash prompt. That is, the colors aren't the same, tab completion doesn't seem to work, etc.

Is there a way I can tell screen to behave just like a normal (at least, normal as in what I am used to) bash prompt ?

Additional Information

I am connecting via ssh from a Mac (Terminal) to a headless linux box (Ubuntu). After logging in, I have TERM=xterm-color and when I run screen I have TERM=screen.

Am going to try the suggestions below to see if I can change the $TERM value first.

Best Answer

Thanks to this post, what I did was add one line to ~/.screenrc:

# ~/.screenrc
defshell -bash      # dash makes it a login shell

Then things in your ~/.bashrc, /etc/bashrc, etc. should get run.