A terminal multiplexer is a software designed to multiplex multiple virtual terminal sessions inside a single terminal window. Wikipedia describes it pretty accurate:
A terminal multiplexer is a software application that can be used to multiplex several virtual consoles, allowing a user to access multiple separate terminal sessions inside a single terminal window or remote terminal session. It is useful for dealing with multiple programs from a command line interface, and for separating programs from the Unix shell that started the program.
You might already know GNU screen, the most well known terminal multiplexer in the UNIX world.
What is tmux?
tmux is a terminal multiplexer and alternative to GNU screen.
Screen was born in 1987 and there were a lot of fixes and enhancements, which led to a (sometimes) complicated and obscure code base.
Apparently one guy named Nicholas Marriott wasn’t happy about the code base of screen, and he began the development of tmux in 2007. Today tmux has a solid and extensible code base, and it’s maintained by several contributors on github.
How do I get tmux?
There are several options to get tmux.
You can download a release on github and compile it all yourself. This is the way to go if you like to have the latest version of tmux on your fingertips.
But there are also pre-compiled versions of tmux available on most current Linux distributions. I’m a Debian guy, so here’s how you install tmux on your Debian-based Linux distribution:
apt-get update apt-get install tmux
You can do the same on Ubuntu.
Right now I don’t have a RHEL, Fedora or CentOS at my disposal, but IMHO there’s no official package available for RHEL and CentOS – and I’m not even surprised by that ;). Though there’s an official Fedora package available. And for those using RHEL and CentOS, there are some manuals available, how you install tmux on RHEL & CentOS – or of course you switch to a proper Linux distribution 😉
How do I use tmux?
Well, this is quite a complicated topic, because tmux has so many features. I can’t really talk about all features, because it would be too complex – and to be honest, I don’t know them all!
Sessions
Let’s start with the most important thing, how to open a new tmux session:
# open an unnamed tmux session tmux # open a named tmux session tmux new-session -s foobar
If you’ve disconnected from your tmux session, you can attach your existing session again:
# List sessions tmux list-sessions # Attach to unnamed session tmux attach-session # Attach to named session tmux attach-session -s foobar
Because tmux is pretty smart, you can even shorten your commands. For example instead of attach-session, you can simply type att or even a is enough.
Status bar
As soon as you’ve started tmux, you should see a status bar on the bottom of your terminal. The status bar will show you the session name (or number), and the windows you’ve opened inside tmux. The current window is suffixed with an asterisk *, and the last window with a dash –.
Key bindings
When you’re inside a tmux session, you can start to benefit from tmux, by using key bindings to do awesome things. By default, all key bindings are prefixed by hitting Ctrl-B. So for example, if you want to create a new window, hit Ctrl-B c.
Windows
Tmux is based on windows. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say one window = one terminal. This isn’t completely true, but let’s say it is for now.
Here are some shortcuts for window management. Remember, you’ve to hit Ctrl-B first!
- c creates a new window
- x kills the current window
- , renames the current window
- n next window
- p previous window
- f find window with specific string
- 0…9 jump to window 0…9
I could add several more shortcuts here, but I think these are the most important ones.
Panes
Now it gets a bit more complicated, because there are panes as well. We just dealt with windows so far, and I told you one window is one terminal. This isn’t completely true, because each window can hold several panes.
With panes you can split windows, so you can see multiple terminals in one single window / screen.
Let’s start with some basic key bindings:
- % splits the window vertically
- “ splits the window horizontally
- o loops through panes
- cursor keys focus another pane (left/right/down/up)
- z zooms the pane
When you’ve opened several panes, you can easily swap them:
- { moves pane to left
- } moves pane to right
- space loops through layouts
To resize panes, it gets more complicated:
Hit the prefix (by default Ctrl-B) then :. Now you’re in command mode, and you can enter one of the following commands:
resize-pane -D <cells> resize-pane -U <cells> resize-pane -L <cells> resize-pane -R <cells>
This will resize the current pane Down, Up, Left or Right.
Configuration
Of course tmux is configurable by a config file, and you can configure nearly everything how you like it. By default, tmux will read the configuration file only when it wasn’t already running. Tmux tries to load the configuration files from /etc/tmux.conf, then ~/.tmux.conf.
There are bazillion of configuration parameters. Here are some important ones:
When you’re configuring tmux, you don’t want to kill your whole tmux sessions just to reload the config. So add the following lines to your config:
unbind r bind r source-file ~/.tmux.conf\; display-message "Config reloaded..."
Now you’ve to restart tmux or hit Ctrl-B : reload-config ~/.tmux.conf at least once. From now on, you can edit your config and hit Ctrl-B r to reload it.
tmux has also built-in mouse support, so let’s enable that:
setw -g mode-mouse on set -g mouse-resize-pane on set -g mouse-select-pane on set -g mouse-select-window on set -g mouse-utf8 off
Try to select a pane or window by clicking with the mouse on it. You should also be able to resize panes by drag n drop. Of course you need a terminal with built-in mouse support.
Also enable vi-style key bindings:
set -g status-keys vi set -g mode-keys vi
I do also like to hit Ctrl-B Ctrl-B to jump between to the last window:
unbind C-b bind C-b last-window
And because I’m lazy, I sometimes forget to release the Ctrl key:
unbind C-c bind C-c new-window unbind C-d bind C-d detach unbind C-x bind C-x kill-pane unbind x bind x kill-pane
If you want to customise your status line, you can do that as well 🙂
# left and right status line set -g status-left "#S" set -g status-right "%a, %d.%b %H:%M:%S" # set status format for windows setw -g window-status-format "#[fg=black,bg=cyan] #I #[fg=white,bg=black] #W " setw -g window-status-current-format "#[fg=black,bg=cyan] #I #[fg=cyan,bg=white] #W " # set default status line colour set -g status-fg white set -g status-bg black # set default pane colour set -g pane-border-fg black set -g pane-active-border-fg cyan # let window blink on activity, bell or content-change setw -g window-status-activity-attr blink setw -g window-status-bell-attr blink setw -g window-status-content-attr blink # message style set -g display-time 1000 setw -g message-fg white setw -g message-bg red # update status every second set -g status-interval 1 # monitor activity setw -g monitor-activity on set -g visual-activity on # unicode setw -g utf8 on set -g status-utf8 on
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