How can I force gnu screen to flush it's logfile?

I am using screen like this:

screen -L -dm -S session1 -c "./game_server -options"

to wrap around game servers. I log their output to a file, and can send them input with:

screen -r session1 -p0 -X "stuff \"this into input^M\""

The timeout between log file flushes can be specified in the configuration file (10 seconds in my case).

The problem I have is that I can't force screen to flush output to the logfile. For example after I send a "status" command to a game server, the game server prints some info, but it takes at least 10 seconds to add that to the log file. I have tried sending:

screen -r session1 -p0 -X "logfile flush 1"

But it doesn't react to that. I've also tried flush 0 with no luck. I wouldn't want to always log with a timeout of 1 second, it's only really needed after receiving a command. Note that I'm paranoid about performance here because the session is running a game server after all.

How can I force screen to flush output to the logfile? Is there a way to do what I need (log output to file and send commands to input) other than with screen, maybe with a fifo?

From serverfault Gipsy King

• Try this:

  screen -r session1 -X colon "logfile flush 1^M"
  

  logfile flush 1 isn't actually a screen command, but colon is. The next thing you pass is the argument to it which has to be quoted and the ^M at the end should actually be a Ctrl-M. Ctrl-V followed by Ctrl-M will generally do the trick for entering an actual Ctrl-M.

  Gipsy King : Thank you very much. Also, I was having problems with Ctrl-V Ctrl-M: it did print ^M in the command line, but then simply printed ^M in the screen window. Might have been the quotes. I ended up using this: screen ... -X stuff "$(printf '%b' 'this into input\015')".
  From mark