Make screen automatically source .bash_profile —08 July 2012

By default screen doesn’t use a login shell, and as a consequence, .bash_profile is not sourced. (Something I find pretty strange, considering that screen is most useful as a login shell…)

To make screen start bash as a login shell, add this line to your .screenrc:

shell -bash

Or if you need something more sophisticated, you can create a custom script for screen to use as a shell. For example create ~/.screen.shell like this:

bash --login

and make it executable:

chmod +x ~/.screen.shell

and add to ~/.screenrc this line:

shell $HOME/.screen.shell