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110 lines
6.8 KiB
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110 lines
6.8 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 3845
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Title: HPR3845: Using tmux, the terminal multiplexer Overview
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3845/hpr3845.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-25 06:31:56
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---
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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3845 for Friday the 28th of April 2023.
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Today's show is entitled, Using Punks the Terminal Multiplexer Overview.
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It is part of the series Lightweight Apps.
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It is the 50th show of Archer 72 and is about 12 minutes long.
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It carries a clean flag.
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The summary is, Archer 72 uses Tmux and Restore sessions between reboots.
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Oh, this is Archer 72.
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Welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
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In this episode I use Tmux and I layer it so that my main window is on my main computer
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and the other sub-windows are on remote computers or Raspberry Pi's.
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You may be asking, what is Tmux?
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Well, it is a program which runs in a terminal and allows other terminal programs to be run
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inside it.
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Each program inside Tmux gets its own terminal managed by Tmux, which can be accessed from
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the single terminal where Tmux is running.
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This is called multiplexing and Tmux is its terminal multiplexer.
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Tmux and any programs running inside it may be detached from the terminal where it is
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running, the outside terminal, and later reattached to the same or another terminal.
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Tmux runs inside Tmux, may be full-screen interactive programs like VI or top, shells
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like Bash or KSH or any other program that can be run in a Unix terminal.
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There is a powerful feature set to access, manage, and organize programs inside Tmux both
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interactively and from scripts.
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The main uses of Tmux are to protect running programs on a remote server from connection
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drops by running them inside Tmux, allowing programs running on a remote server to be accessed
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from multiple different local computers, work with multiple programs and shells together
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in one terminal a bit like a window manager.
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A terminal I have been using for this is Rock's Term and when you uncheck the show menu bar,
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it has a nice minimal interface, look to it.
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Tmux works on the basis of a prefix key, which by default is Control-B is the prefix.
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In my Tmux.com, I set it to Control-A for the main window.
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Do that by in the Tmux.com set space dash G, space prefix, space C dash A, which stands
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for Control-A.
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This line is unbind space C dash B for Control-B.
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It does what it says, it unbinds the Control-B function.
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The next line bind space C dash A, space and prefix, it binds the Control-A.
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The next line is set W, space dash G, the next line starts with set W, and I won't read
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it out.
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It's a longer command and it sets the colors for the window.
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Now that you have a Tmux.com file, when you open Tmux, you can use T, space, A, space dash
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D, and that opens Tmux by attaching it and the detaching what you have been using before.
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In the case of just starting Tmux new, you will have just a single window labeled zero
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colon and bash if you're using a bash shell.
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You can create a new window or several by using prefix C for Create, and then you repeat
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that several times for a couple of different windows.
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If you want to go back to the original one that you created, use prefix one to go back
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to the first window.
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You might want to make a couple splits, so you use prefix and percent sign which will
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do a horizontal split, and if you want to split that window vertically, use prefix and
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quotation marks.
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Say I'm working on my RetroPi in the first window, I go to prefix one, and it doesn't
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have a name, but by default is bash because I'm working on a bash shell.
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So I use prefix colon, rename dash window, and then I give it a name of RetroPi, it's
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what I'm working on, and then enter.
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So next I want to start up a MUT session, and I hit prefix two to go to the second window
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I had created, and type in MUT, which is my email client, and it starts that up and
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asks for a password, and then I can start looking at my Gmail from there.
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Now I want to go back to my RetroPi window, which I think is, I said is a single window,
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and I do the prefix one, and I want to make a couple splits, like I discussed before,
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and I also want to run T-mux on my RetroPi, but if I use the same prefixes, it won't work
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correctly, so on the RetroPi I changed it up a little, and in the T-mux.com file, instead
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of changing the prefixes to A, I changed it to F. I probably could change it to something
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else, it just seemed logical at the time, on the T-mux.com on the remote servers, and
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bound the prefix to be F, by going back again and setting prefix C-F, unbind C-B for
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CTRL-B, and bind C-F space and prefix.
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Now I can navigate T-mux either locally with CTRL-A, and wherever I want to go, or CTRL-F
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when I'm in the window that has the remote session.
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Prefix O is how you cycle between the different panes in a window, or you can do prefix and
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arrow keys up, down, left, right, or if you want to go from the upper left to the lower
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right, you can do prefix and the down and right arrow at the same time.
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What would happen if you had all the windows set up, and then you either had to reboot
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or the computer shut down, you lose everything, unless you had the T-mux resurrects and T-mux
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continue in plugins.
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To install T-P-M, which is the T-mux plugin manager, T-mux resurrect and T-mux continue
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them, navigate to tilde slash dot T-mux slash plugins, and get clone the plugins into
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that directory.
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If you're ready in a T-mux window, you just need to press prefix I, and it will load
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the plugins.
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This is only after you put the entries for where the plugins are located in your T-mux.com
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file.
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I will leave the complete configuration file in the show notes.
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Be sure to put in the line at the end where it says run space dash B space.
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Also slash dot T-mux slash plugins slash T-P-M slash T-P-M.
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Next create a directory slash dot T-mux slash resurrect.
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This is where T-mux resurrect and T-mux continuum saves are located.
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Do nothing and T-mux continuum saves automatically every 15 minutes.
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At any time use prefix plus control S to save a snapshot of your session.
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To restore a session to the last save before reboot, use prefix plus control R.
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Here are the steps to restore to a previous point in time.
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Make sure you start this with a fresh T-mux instance.
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CD tilde slash dot T-mux slash resurrect.
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Locate the save file you'd like to use for restore file names have a timestamp.
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Then link the last file to the desired save file, ln-sf in the file name last.
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Do restore with T-mux resurrect key prefix plus control R.
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That's all I have, hope it was useful, thank you for listening and be sure to record
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a show if you're on, right?
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You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does work.
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Today's show was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself.
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If you ever thought of recording a podcast, click on our contribute link to find out how
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easy it really is.
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The HBR has been kindly provided by an honesthost.com, the internet archive and our sings.net.
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On the Sadois status, today's show is released under Creative Commons, Attribution 4.0 International
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License.
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