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Comment by joatmon-snoo | Hacker News Reader

When I was first introduced to tmux, I was really excited by having a terminal session I could reattach to. I was never able to get very deep into it though: (1) a lot of the time a single script would get me up to speed, (2) the extra layer of abstraction broke some stuff I was doing, and (3) I couldn't make heads or tails of a lot of the tmux documentation. I'll definitely take a second look at a lot of the things people are posting here, but in the meantime, is there somewhere I can actually learn how to use tmux properly?

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When I set up a new server, I always configure ~/.bash_profile as follows:

   if [ $TERM = "xterm" ]; then
     ( (tmux has-session -t remote && \
        tmux attach-session -t remote) || \
       (tmux new-session -s remote) ) && exit 0
     echo "tmux failed to start"
   fi
   if [ $TERM = "screen" ]; then
     clear
     cat /etc/motd
   fi

This way tmux gets executed serverside always when I login remotely (e.g. via PuTTY), so my logon session and all running programs are always protected against sudden connectivity breaks. Also I rebind Ctrl+B to Ctrl+A via ~/.tmux.conf.

Three keyboard combinations to remember for beginner: Ctrl+A C creates a new window, Ctrl+A D detaches, and Ctrl+A {digit} switches windows. I'm not a power user of tmux, just a few basic features is all I need, but they have changed my server administration habits dramatically.

Half a dozen commands will get you 90% of the way there. After you've run tmux:

  ctrl+b followed by...
  % - split pane vertically
  " - split pane horizontally
  arrow keys - change pane you're typing in
  :new-window
  2 - switch to window 2
  x - kill pane
  d - detach

Command line arguments:

  tmux list-sessions
  tmux attach #will attach to last session by default
  tmux attach -t0 #will attach to session 0

A nice and convenient shortcut for:

tmux list-sessions

tmux ls

I've found that adding a simple configuration makes tmux a) nicer to look at b) somewhat more intuitive (the default colors made the screen confusing to me.)

This is my current configuration: https://gist.github.com/dguaraglia/f15f39f339545041845612a5b...

With that and using tmuxp to manage a context for each of my projects, I can quickly "launch" a project and have a window with an editing pane, a pane to run tests and a pane to run deployment commands/anything else, all of the panes are already using the correct Python virtualenv, etc.

This is a pretty comprehensive cheatsheet: https://gist.github.com/MohamedAlaa/2961058

I think you should give the man page & built in documentation another chance. It's not that long (maybe 40-50 pages printed) and you can skip a few sections that you'll know to look up if you need them. You can also skip the detailed descriptions of most commands and options. Just having the important shortcuts memorized and having a general idea of what commands you have and what they do is all you need. Don't forget to read the examples.

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