How to create a set a screen windows from a shell script

[Bob Bawn]

Hello,

 

I have a distributed system simulation that runs a set of processes. Each process logs interesting information to stderr. I have a another script that generates a file with the command lines for each process in the simulation.

 

I have a script that creates an xterm(1) for each line in a file:

 

#!/bin/sh
# run_xterm - start an xterm(1) to run each line in stdin

xargs -l1 -t -i sh -c "xterm -e {} &"

 

I run it like this:

 

$ run_xterm < file_of_commands

 

 

I would like to use screen instead of xterm but screen always seems to want to be attached to a terminal. I think the following illustrates my problem:

 

address@hidden cluster]$ screen

..

address@hidden cluster]$ cat > cmds
less /etc/inittab
less /etc/fstab
address@hidden cluster]$ xargs -l1 -t screen < cmds
screen less /etc/inittab
Must be connected to a terminal.
screen less /etc/fstab
Must be connected to a terminal.
address@hidden cluster]$

 

Should I be using expect or something that talks to ptys?

 

Is there a better way to start a set of processes, one per screen window?

 

Thanks,

Bob Bawn