tmux & tmuxinator¶

tmux¶

tmux is a powerful terminal multiplexer

What is a terminal multiplexer? It lets you switch easily between several programs in one terminal, detach them (they keep running in the background) and reattach them to a different terminal. And do a lot more.

tmuxinator¶

tmuxinator is basically the best way to configure tmux to make your life easier :)

With tmuxinator you can create and manage tmux sessions in yaml.

Installation instructions¶

tmux¶

To install tmux on your machine, just run the following command:

sudo apt install tmux

Then comes the hard part... You need to configure tmux the way you want it, the way you like it. You can change the binding keys, the theme, add several plugins,... There’s a lot of things you can add to your terminal to be more efficient.

For starters I recommend using the following configuration.

https://github.com/tony/tmux-config

It will change the key bindings to use Ctrl+A instead of Ctrl+B but also add a cool theme and a cpu monitor to the terminals

Also to be able to use the mouse on the terminal, follow this tutorial:

http://tangledhelix.com/blog/2012/07/16/tmux-and-mouse-mode/

tmuxinator¶

Install ruby and then follow the instructions on the github repository:

sudo apt install ruby

https://github.com/tmuxinator/tmuxinator

Help¶

tmux commands¶

ctrl-a ?        help

ctrl-a c        create a new window
ctrl-a 1        switch to window 1, ..., 9, 0
ctrl-a p        switch previous window
ctrl-a p        switch next window
ctrl-a w        switch to a window from a list

ctrl-a "        split vertically
ctrl-a %        split horizontally
ctrl-a left     go to pane on the left
ctrl-a right    go to pane on the right
ctrl-a up       go to pane on the up
ctrl-a down     go to pane on the down
ctrl-a-left     resize left
ctrl-a-right    resize right
ctrl-a-up       resize up
ctrl-a-down     resize down
ctrl-a x        close current pane

ctrl-a space    change the pane layout (tiled, main-horizontal, ...)

ctrl-a &        kill window
ctrl-a d        hide the tmux session and go back to the classic terminal

tmuxinator¶

To create automatically an empty session run:

mux new SESSION_NAME

To start your session:

mux SESSION_NAME

Edit the session:

mux open SESSION_NAME

With tmuxinator you can specify you tmux in yaml like this

name: kinect1_processing
root: ~/

windows:
  - WINDOW_NAME:
      layout: tiled    #even-vertical, even-horizontal
      panes:
        - roscore
        - htop
        - etc ...
  - WINDOW_NAME2:
      layout: main-horizontal   #main-vertical
      panes:
        - vi
        - etc ...

Tip

If you want to only print the command use : tmux send-keys -t SESSION_NAME:WINDOW_NAME.PANE_NB "command to print";