tmux Notes

Contents

• Gotchas
  • truecolor support
  • Italic font support
  • Troubleshooting Custom Term Entries
• General tmux Usage
  • Working with Sessions
  • Working with Windows
  • Working with Panes
• Plugins
• Pair Programming with tmux
• Useful Links
• TODOs

Gotchas

Gotchas Truecolor support

🚨 Getting truecolor 24 bit color support working in tmux is a total pain in the ass. The tmux server MUST be restarted when adjusting the below settings. Reloading the configuration is not enough!

Add the below lines to the tmux.conf file to get truecolor working. 🤞

set -g default-terminal "xterm-256color"
set-option -ga terminal-overrides ",xterm-256color:Tc"

Neovim will whine 😭 about the terminal being explicitly set to xterm-256color screen256-color handles italic font a little better within tmux as opposed to using xterm-256color but truecolor support is lost when setting tmux TERM to screen256-color within tmux.

Gotchas Italic font support

To get italic font working within tmux, click here

The terminal emulator iTerm etc must be able to support italic font.

To add an italic terminfo entry for a particular user

mkdir ~/.terminfo

Create xterm-256color-italic.terminfo and put the below contents within it or paste the contents from the system clipboard into the file.

xterm-256color-italic|xterm with 256 colors and italic,
  sitm=\E[3m, ritm=\E[23m,
  use=xterm-256color,

or

pbpaste > /path/to/xterm-256color-italic.terminfo

Then create a xterm-256color-italic.terminfo file and put the below contents within it or paste the contents from the system clipboard into the file.

tmux-256color|tmux with 256 colors,
  ritm=\E[23m, rmso=\E[27m, sitm=\E[3m, smso=\E[7m, Ms@,
  khome=\E[1~, kend=\E[4~,
  use=xterm-256color, use=screen-256color,

pbpaste > $dots/terms/tmux/tmux-256color.terminfo

To install the newly created terminfo entries for this particular user.

tic -x -o ~/.terminfo $dots/terms/tmux/xterm-256color-italic.terminfo
tic -x -o ~/.terminfo $dots/terms/tmux/tmux-256color.terminfo

tmux.conf

set -g default-terminal 'tmux-256color'
set -as terminal-overrides ',xterm*:Tc'

And finally for the icing on the 🎂

.vimrc

highlight Comment gui=italic
let &t_8f="\<Esc>[38;2;%lu;%lu;%lum"
let &t_8b="\<Esc>[48;2;%lu;%lu;%lum"
set termguicolors

General Notes

To manually reload a tmux configuration file, ie. ~/.tmux.conf

prefix + :

:source-file ~/.tmux.conf

The above command is useful when there is not key binding set for reloading a tmux configuration file.

Troubleshooting Custom term entries

When using tic to install custom term entries to get 24 bit truecolor support along with italics working a Linux box, and within tmux the below settings may need to be set.

When opening a ncurses based application, ie. mutt on a Linux box the below error will more than likely be presented when trying to launch mutt.

Error opening terminal: xterm-256color-italic

To resolve the above error message, make sure ncurses-term has been installed along with xterm, and then set TERM to xterm in a shell configuration file, ie. config.fish. For reasons I don't understand setting TERM to xterm allows mutt to properly launch within iTerm.app through an ssh session to a Debian box. ¯\(ツ)/¯

tmux is short for terminal multiplexer

• By default all tmux key bindings will require a prefix key sequence before they are active. The prefix is initially set as control+b

• tmux can be used for a paired programming session, ie. two people can login to the same tmux session and edit the same files.

General tmux Usage

To start a new tmux session with a particular name

tmux new-session -s [session_name]

or

tmux new -s [session-name]

To create a new tmux session in a detached state

tmux new -s [session-name] -d

To list all the tmux commands

tmux list-commands

To list all the current key-bindings

tmux list-keys

To print a list of global options being set in tmux

prefix + : show-options -g

To list available tmux sessions

tmux list-sessions

or

tmux ls

To display a list of sessions known to the local box

The below key-binding works by pressing the prefix key combo, then pressing s

prefix + s

To attach to a tmux session using its name

tmux attach -t [session-name]

To kill a tmux session using its name

tmux kill-session -t [session-name]

To cycle through various pane layouts in tmux

prefix refers to pressing control + whatever key you have assigned ie. in my situation it would be control + s

prefix then spacebar

To detach from a tmux session

prefix + d

To get a list of all keybindings and associated commands that trigger these bindings

prefix + ?

When using the -r flag in conjunction with the bind keyword in the .tmux.conf file it allows one to repeat a command without having to repeatedly input the prefix

To get scroll back history when using tmux with iTerm2, see 💳

To clear scroll back history for a tmux pane

Get into tmux command mode

prefix + :

:clear-history

Working with Windows

To rename a tmux window

prefix+,

To move the current window to alternate position, ie. move window 10 to window 1 in the index of tmux windows

1. Enter into tmux command mode

prefix+:

2. Enter the below command

swap-window -t 1

The above command will move the current window to the right one position, and if the current window is the last window in the index of windows, then it will move it to window 1 within the index, and move all other windows accordingly.

To move the current window to the left by 1

:swap-window -t -1

Working with Sessions

To print a graphical list of available tmux sessions

prefix + s

To move the active window to a different session

:move-window -t [OTHER_SESSION]:

To move a different window from the same session to an alternate session

:move-window -s [CURRENT_SESSION]:[WINDOW] -t [OTHER_SESSION]

Working with Panes

To maximize a pane within a tmux window

prefix + z

To restore the pane to the previous size

prefix + z

To kill a pane within a window

prefix + x

To create a vertical split from the current pane

prefix + %

To create a horizontal split from the current pane

prefix + "

Plugins

To manage tmux plugins check out tpm

To manage sessions, windows, panes (including pane layouts), tmux-resurrect

Pair Programmming with tmux

1. The first user on the system can start a tmux session

tmux new-session -s apples-and-oranges

2. The second user on the system can connect to the existing session

tmux new-session -t apples-and-oranges -s user2session

Useful Links 🔗

• How to fix mouse breakage in tmux
• hackernoon.com - Gentle Intro to tmux

TODOs

• Read the following article about using shared clipboard to solve issues with cross system copy / paste.
• figure out starting a interactive fish shell session within tmux, the $fish_users_paths are duplicating.