Screen cannot open terminal error

2018-07-03 - How to fix a "Screen cannot open terminal" error
Tags: linux toolbox unix

The problem

At my current workplace there are die hard screen fanatics that refuse to upgrade to tmux. Sometimes I get the following error :

Cannot open your terminal '/dev/pts/0' - please check.

The solution

This error means that you did not open the shell with the user you logged in with. You can make screen happy by running :

script /dev/null

In this new environment your screen commands will work normally.