A newer alternative to the classic Screen is Tmux. As a terminal multiplexer, enables you to have multiple terminals open in a windows, saved in a session. You can detach from that session and come back later, and all your windows and programs running on it will still be alive, and share sessions.
A Tmux command is usually of the form CTRL-b KEY, i.e., you'll have to press the CTRL key along with b, followed by a generic KEY. This initial part of a command is called prefix, and can be configured.
You'll need to be a MetaARPA member in order to use Tmux on SDF
You can run tmux with:
$ tmux
You will create a tmux session name 0. If you want to create a session with a more meaningful name, use:
$ tmux new-session -s session_name
In your terminal a status bar will show up, with the name of your shell in the bottom left (actually, the name of the terminal window you're on), and a clock in the bottom right. There are many customizations possible for this status bar, you can check the documentation for all available options. To detach from a session, type CTRL-b d, and you will return to a normal promopt. Tmux will keep your session alive, and to resume it run:
$ tmux attach -t session_name
By default, a Tmux session starts with only one window. You can create more by typing CTRL-b c. All windows have a numeric id, and start named as the current shell or command being run. To rename the current window, type CTRL-b ,. Then you can switch between windows typing CTRL-b “number”, where “number” is the number of a window. CTRL-b n and CTRL-b p are both shortcuts to, respectively, the next and previous window.
As said before, $ tmux new-session -s session name creates a new session, with the given name. To list all running session, run:
$ tmux ls
Now, supose you want to connect to your tmux session from one machine, let's say your work computer connected to SDF, and open the same tmux session from another machine, e.g. your home computer. By design, you can't do this directly, like in Screen. To achieve that, you “clone” the existing session in a new one, and then connect to it, so both session will contain the same windows and data. Note that the main assumption here is that you are logging on SDF (or any other server with tmux) with the same user. You can do that running:
$ tmux new-session -t existing_session -s new_session_name
It is possible to split windows in a session with CTRL-b “ or CTRL-b %, respectively, for horizontal or vertical orientation. Each one of these split windows is called a pane. In fact, a window in Tmux terminology is a collection of panes, so a window with no splits also contains an unique pane.
Sharing a tmux session between users is simple. Optionally, when starting a shared session, you should specify a socket file, running:
$ tmux -S /tmp/socket_file new-session -s session_name
Then, you need to change the permissions of that socket to 777
$ chmod 777 /tmp/socket_file
And finally, you will be able to share a session with other users. A caveat is that all users connected to that section will use the Tmux configuration of the user who created it. To attach to a shared session:
$ tmux -S /tmp/socket_file attach
Tmux is configured by a file located at $HOME/.tmux.conf, and a sample configuration file is presented below.
# makes window's indexes start from 1 set -g base-index 1 # resize windows only when a smaller client is using a session setw -g aggressive-resize on # disables panel selection using mouse set -g mouse-select-pane off # open a man page in a separated split pane bind m command-prompt -p "man page:" "split-window -h 'exec man %%'" # set default terminal set -g default-terminal "screen-256color"
If you lose the ability to attach a session of tmux (or even see it in `tmux list-sessions`), but can see it's pid is still running, try the following:
$ killall -s SIGUSR1 tmux
$ tmux attach
If you have a need for multiple clipboard-like buffers for storing and retrieving text (akin to registers in Emacs or Vim), Tmux already supports that, although this functionality is not well exposed by default. Below is a sample piece of configuration that makes available 26 registers designated by single lower-case letters a-z.
# Initialize alphanumerical registers to avoid the problem with 'delete-buffer'
run "tmux set-buffer -b a \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b b \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b c \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b d \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b e \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b f \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b g \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b h \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b i \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b j \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b k \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b l \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b m \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b n \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b o \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b p \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b q \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b r \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b s \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b t \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b u \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b v \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b w \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b x \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b y \"$(echo ' ')\""
run "tmux set-buffer -b z \"$(echo ' ')\""
# Copy to user-selected register
bind -T copy-mode r command-prompt -1 -p '(register)' 'delete-buffer -b %1 ; send -X copy-pipe "tmux set-buffer -n %1"'
# Paste from user-selected register
bind -T prefix C-] command-prompt -1 -p '(register)' 'paste-buffer -b %1'
The way it works is this: when in copy-mode you get an additional key binding r which prompts you for a single-letter named register in which to store the marked region. In normal mode you get a prefix command C-b C-] which prompts for the name of the register whose contents will be pasted at the cursor. You can also list the contents of all buffers by running C-b :list-buffers. Manual initializing of all the buffers seems necessary, because otherwise delete-buffer complains about trying to delete a nonexistent buffer when used for the first time for a given letter.
If colors are not working in your tmux session try running tmux with the -2 flag.
$ tmux -2
To persist 256color support in your terminal you can add the following line to your ~/.bashrc
TERM=screen-256color
$Id: tmux.html,v 1.6 2014/06/09 06:08:42 ike Exp $ Tmux: terminal multiplexer; multiple terminals - traditional link (using RCS)