Episode: 3845
Title: HPR3845: Using tmux, the terminal multiplexer Overview
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3845/hpr3845.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 06:31:56

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3845 for Friday the 28th of April 2023.
Today's show is entitled, Using Punks the Terminal Multiplexer Overview.
It is part of the series Lightweight Apps.
It is the 50th show of Archer 72 and is about 12 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Archer 72 uses Tmux and Restore sessions between reboots.
Oh, this is Archer 72.
Welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
In this episode I use Tmux and I layer it so that my main window is on my main computer
and the other sub-windows are on remote computers or Raspberry Pi's.
You may be asking, what is Tmux?
Well, it is a program which runs in a terminal and allows other terminal programs to be run
inside it.
Each program inside Tmux gets its own terminal managed by Tmux, which can be accessed from
the single terminal where Tmux is running.
This is called multiplexing and Tmux is its terminal multiplexer.
Tmux and any programs running inside it may be detached from the terminal where it is
running, the outside terminal, and later reattached to the same or another terminal.
Tmux runs inside Tmux, may be full-screen interactive programs like VI or top, shells
like Bash or KSH or any other program that can be run in a Unix terminal.
There is a powerful feature set to access, manage, and organize programs inside Tmux both
interactively and from scripts.
The main uses of Tmux are to protect running programs on a remote server from connection
drops by running them inside Tmux, allowing programs running on a remote server to be accessed
from multiple different local computers, work with multiple programs and shells together
in one terminal a bit like a window manager.
A terminal I have been using for this is Rock's Term and when you uncheck the show menu bar,
it has a nice minimal interface, look to it.
Tmux works on the basis of a prefix key, which by default is Control-B is the prefix.
In my Tmux.com, I set it to Control-A for the main window.
Do that by in the Tmux.com set space dash G, space prefix, space C dash A, which stands
for Control-A.
This line is unbind space C dash B for Control-B.
It does what it says, it unbinds the Control-B function.
The next line bind space C dash A, space and prefix, it binds the Control-A.
The next line is set W, space dash G, the next line starts with set W, and I won't read
it out.
It's a longer command and it sets the colors for the window.
Now that you have a Tmux.com file, when you open Tmux, you can use T, space, A, space dash
D, and that opens Tmux by attaching it and the detaching what you have been using before.
In the case of just starting Tmux new, you will have just a single window labeled zero
colon and bash if you're using a bash shell.
You can create a new window or several by using prefix C for Create, and then you repeat
that several times for a couple of different windows.
If you want to go back to the original one that you created, use prefix one to go back
to the first window.
You might want to make a couple splits, so you use prefix and percent sign which will
do a horizontal split, and if you want to split that window vertically, use prefix and
quotation marks.
Say I'm working on my RetroPi in the first window, I go to prefix one, and it doesn't
have a name, but by default is bash because I'm working on a bash shell.
So I use prefix colon, rename dash window, and then I give it a name of RetroPi, it's
what I'm working on, and then enter.
So next I want to start up a MUT session, and I hit prefix two to go to the second window
I had created, and type in MUT, which is my email client, and it starts that up and
asks for a password, and then I can start looking at my Gmail from there.
Now I want to go back to my RetroPi window, which I think is, I said is a single window,
and I do the prefix one, and I want to make a couple splits, like I discussed before,
and I also want to run T-mux on my RetroPi, but if I use the same prefixes, it won't work
correctly, so on the RetroPi I changed it up a little, and in the T-mux.com file, instead
of changing the prefixes to A, I changed it to F. I probably could change it to something
else, it just seemed logical at the time, on the T-mux.com on the remote servers, and
bound the prefix to be F, by going back again and setting prefix C-F, unbind C-B for
CTRL-B, and bind C-F space and prefix.
Now I can navigate T-mux either locally with CTRL-A, and wherever I want to go, or CTRL-F
when I'm in the window that has the remote session.
Prefix O is how you cycle between the different panes in a window, or you can do prefix and
arrow keys up, down, left, right, or if you want to go from the upper left to the lower
right, you can do prefix and the down and right arrow at the same time.
What would happen if you had all the windows set up, and then you either had to reboot
or the computer shut down, you lose everything, unless you had the T-mux resurrects and T-mux
continue in plugins.
To install T-P-M, which is the T-mux plugin manager, T-mux resurrect and T-mux continue
them, navigate to tilde slash dot T-mux slash plugins, and get clone the plugins into
that directory.
If you're ready in a T-mux window, you just need to press prefix I, and it will load
the plugins.
This is only after you put the entries for where the plugins are located in your T-mux.com
file.
I will leave the complete configuration file in the show notes.
Be sure to put in the line at the end where it says run space dash B space.
Also slash dot T-mux slash plugins slash T-P-M slash T-P-M.
Next create a directory slash dot T-mux slash resurrect.
This is where T-mux resurrect and T-mux continuum saves are located.
Do nothing and T-mux continuum saves automatically every 15 minutes.
At any time use prefix plus control S to save a snapshot of your session.
To restore a session to the last save before reboot, use prefix plus control R.
Here are the steps to restore to a previous point in time.
Make sure you start this with a fresh T-mux instance.
CD tilde slash dot T-mux slash resurrect.
Locate the save file you'd like to use for restore file names have a timestamp.
Then link the last file to the desired save file, ln-sf in the file name last.
Do restore with T-mux resurrect key prefix plus control R.
That's all I have, hope it was useful, thank you for listening and be sure to record
a show if you're on, right?
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