A tmux crash course (2016) | Hacker News Reader

A tmux crash course (2016)

robots.thoughtbot.com

38 pointstosh12 comments

Zoom is the best command, after using tmux for years, just discovered it. Ctrl-b z brings a pane into full screen and back. I use a 4x4 grid and zoom in and out.

I'm just curious- as I haven't really been able to get into tmux. Why use it as opposed to iTerm's built-in tabs and panes? Or like what are the selling points outside of just tabs and panes?

... I mostly just want to be sold on it :)

My initial attraction to screen / tmux was when I spent most of my time logged into remote servers. The ability to start a long-running script at the office, detach from screen, then re-attach at home to check on it later was indispensable.

Can you do this with traditional commands? Disown detatches from the terminal (if I remember correctly), is there an equivalent to re-atach it later?

With tmux you can have multiple terminal panes going in a session, disconnect, and then reconnect.

Even better: use iTerm's tmux integration!

In my current workflow, I ssh into a server and then run "tmux -CCu attach -t main", which will open all the windows and tabs that I had open previously, but as regular iTerm windows and tabs. It's possible to also maintain tab/window colors and such, but I found all that to be a bit fiddly.

I often use screen within tmux as it's easier with ctrl A and ctrl B than double of those.

You can configure your local tmux to have a key press send the prefix command to a remote tmux with a single keypress.

For example, to bind C-a to control the remote session:

   bind-key -n C-a send-prefix

Binding isn't an option as only defaults are available on target machines (can't save .screenrc file). There can be thousands of target machines so binding doesn't scale.

I'm sorry I wasn't clear. This would be a binding in your local tmux configuration that sends the prefix command to whatever is in your current pane, allowing you to have a key act as a 'remote prefix' button.

I agree that bindings still don't scale incredibly well depending on the number of host machines you need to ssh from. I think your screen workaround is a pretty neat solution.

I suppose you mean that you run tmux locally and then you ssh into a server and run screen remotely?

If so, I wonder how hard it would be to make tmux into a client of itself using control mode. I only learned about control mode when I discovered iTerm2's tmux integration, whereby remote tmux windows materialize as "actual" terminal windows on my desktop. However, for the same reason that iTerm2 can resize a window, create a new one, show and hide them, etc, I would _imagine_ it's possible to have your remote tmux windows materialize as tmux windows in your local tmux, and thus would be managed using only a single prefix key.

I would guess such a capability would need to be baked into tmux, but I actually wonder how much code would actually be required, since control mode already exists and clearly works quite well.

ssh to remote server over VPN then tmux attach, then connect to target machine and launch screen to work multiple sessions on target machine as it's not networked.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com