tmux is great to keep a session on a remote computer alive even when you get disconnected because of a network failure or because you need to move from one network access point to another.

The interactive process you ran on the remote machine keeps running.

The editor you opened on the remote machine stays open. Even if you are in the middle of a cut-and-paste, when the connection is lost, you can still reconnect and you don't lose anything.

It can provide you with multiple buffers and split-windows to do more than one operation at the same time via a single ssh connection.

Here is my modest configuration file and some command I use.

My Configuration file

examples/tmux.conf

# See http://www.hamvocke.com/blog/a-guide-to-customizing-your-tmux-conf/
# remap prefix from 'C-b' to 'C-a'
unbind C-b
set-option -g prefix C-a
bind-key C-a send-prefix
bind-key C-d detach-client

Start using

  • ssh to remote machine (use Putty if your desktop runs Windows)
  • Save the above file in ~/.tmux.conf
  • Install tmux if it is not installed yet. e.g. sudo apt-get install tmux

  • Start tmux by running tmux
  • Ctrl-a Ctrl-d - detach from the tmux session (then you can close your ssh session with Ctrl-d keeping the tmux session alive
  • Next time when you connect to the server, run tmux a to attach to the existing session

Buffers

  • Ctrl-a c Create another buffer
  • Ctrl-a 0 Jump to buffer 0
  • Ctrl-a 1 Jump to buffer 1
  • ...
  • Ctrl-a , Set the name of the buffer
  • Ctrl-a w Select buffer (list view)
  • Ctrl-a s Select buffer (tree view)
  • Ctrl-a f Select buffer search (ENTER on empty search to see full list)
  • Ctrl-d or exit will close the buffer

Windows

Each buffer can be split up into windows.

  • Ctrl-a " Split window vertically
  • Ctrl-a % Split window horizontally
  • Ctrl-a (arrows) switch to another window
  • Ctrl-a x Close current window

Ctrl-a

  • Ctrl-a Ctrl-a is a Ctrl-a (jump to the beginning of the line)

Help

  • Ctrl-a ? list keyboard binding. The bind-key is Ctrl-b by default but we have configured it to be Ctrl-a.
  • ESC ESC pressed twice will leave the help window
  • Ctrl-s Search in help window

Multiple sessions

I never needed to run two tmux session on the same remote machine, but sometimes I forgot that I already have one running and instead of using tmux a to attache to an existing one I ran tmux that created a new one.

If I recognize it immediately I can just quit it (e.g. with Ctrl-d) and then get into my regular session.

If, however I start working and get disconnected, when I reconnect I might want to decide which one to connect to.

From the outside (after ssh connection was established, but before you attach to tmux, you can run: tmux list-sessions that will, well, list the sessions. 

0: 1 windows (created Mon Jul 23 04:52:55 2018) [135x61]
3: 1 windows (created Mon Sep 17 04:27:08 2018) [135x61]

Then you can attach yourself to any of the existing session:

tmux a -t 0

Copy Paste in tmux

See the article about select-copy-paste in tmux.