How do you start Unix screen command with a command?
Your program is being run (well, except the cd), it's just that it's being run without a parent shell, so as soon as it completes, it exits and you're done.
You could do:
screen -t "autotest" 2 bash -c 'cd ~/project/contactdb ; autotest'
Spawns two shells, but life will probably go on.
Try this:
$ screen -S 'tailf messages' -d -m tailf /var/log/messages
Then later you can do:
$ screen -ls1234.tailf messages
Followed by:
$screen -r 1234
This might help but may not be entirely what you want.
Put "zombie az" or "defzombie az" as the first line of your .screenrc. "az" can be whatever 2 keys you'd like. Now, when a screen ought to close (command finished executing, for instance), it won't actually close; hitting 'a' will close it, hitting 'z' will re-execute the command attached to that screen.
I found that at the screen user's manual.