Discussion of multiplexing terminals with tmux

[drio]

Intended for intermediate lessons.

[jiffyclub]

A single backtick is sufficient for inline code.

[wking]

On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 11:02:52AM -0800, David Rio Deiros wrote:

A bash/intermediate/tmux.intro.md (102)

I love terminal multiplexers, but I have a hard time imagining a boot
camp where we have time to go into detail about them. However,
@ahmadia thinks we might 1. This is a stand-alone lesson, so it
would be easy to skip on a per-workshop basis. If we decide that we
do want a tmux lesson, I'd prefer:

• Local images, because they're easier to keep track of.
• Links to free docs, because students shouldn't have to buy a book to
  learn their tooling.

[rgaiacs]

Make this statement more general?

Terminal multiplixer, like Tmux, can help with that.

[drio]

Thanks for the feedback. I will work on these and get back to you with an updated pull request.

[gvwilson]

My feeling is that this belongs in supplementary material, but I'll leave it up to the people wrangling the intermediate shell stuff to decide.

[gvwilson]

Please redirect to intermediate/shell/tmux.md.

[drio]

Thanks for the comments and suggestions, I have taken care of them. This should be ready to merge.

[wking]

On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 07:16:22AM -0800, David Rio Deiros wrote:

Thanks for the comments and suggestions, I have taken care of
them. This should be ready to merge.

@jiffyclub's “single backtick is sufficient for inline code” meant
things like:

-By default that is: Ctrl-b.
+By default that is: Ctrl-b.

Block code should use triple tildes (see #201 and #194):

  $ tmux ls
  0: 8 windows (created Wed Dec  4 10:00:35 2013) [178x49]

I'd also avoid prompts in the inline code:

• …its binary: $ tmux, that…
• …its binary: tmux, that…

[drio]

Thanks at @wking. Let me know if you see anything else otherwise this is good to go.

[wking]

On Sat, Mar 29, 2014 at 10:02:58AM -0700, David Rio Deiros wrote:

Let me know if you see anything else…

There's still a:

$ tmux attach

that should be:

  $ tmux attach

[drio]

Ok, fixed.

[wking]

On Sat, Mar 29, 2014 at 12:15:04PM -0700, David Rio Deiros wrote:

Ok, fixed.

As of ffa1425 there's still a trailing backtick after attach.

[drio]

Fixed.

[wking]

Getting closer :).

• “my unix flavors” should probably be “many *nix flavors”.
• “by typing: PREFIX c” should probably be “by typing PREFIX c”.
• “To split a window vertically press: PREFIX % and PREFIX " to
  split horizontally.” should probably be “Press PREFIX % to split a
  window vertically and PREFIX " to split horizontally”.
• “some editing with,” should probably be “some editing with
  $EDITOR,”. I haven't looked at the PNG, so I'm not sure which
  editor you're using. This sentence is also inconsitent about pane
  references, with “number 0”, “number 1”, and “pane number 2”.

[gvwilson]

On 2014-03-29 10:42 PM, W. Trevor King wrote:

• “my unix flavors” should probably be “many *nix flavors”.
  We just say "Unix" elsewhere.

[wking]

On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 04:24:04AM -0700, Greg Wilson wrote:

On 2014-03-29 10:42 PM, W. Trevor King wrote:

• “my unix flavors” should probably be “many *nix flavors”.

We just say "Unix" elsewhere.

I think that's trademarked 1, and doesn't apply to Linux (and some
other mostly POSIX systems):

The Open Group requests that UNIX is always used as an adjective
followed by a generic term such as system to help avoid the creation
of a genericized trademark.

[rgaiacs]

@drio When I run make clean site the tmux lesson isn't build properly. If I add

---
layout: lesson
root: ../..
title: Taming the console with tmux
level: intermediate
---

at the begin of the file it build properly. (Maybe this only happens with my current version of Jekyll, 1.4.3.)

What about using ## instead of #### for the headers?

[rgaiacs]

Later you use PREFIX key and you can make here a little clear what it means. What about:

To communicate with tmux, we use a shortcut prefixed with a key combination, e.g. PREFIX c that means press the prefixed followed by the c key. By default PREFIX is Ctrl-b.

[davclark]

While it adds a layer of explanatory complexity, I tend to use byobu, which is simple to set up and comes well-configured for cloud computing work out of the box. Might you add a link to that?

[rgaiacs]

More informations about byobu: http://byobu.co/

[davclark]

Thanks for the surprisingly polite request to post more. I see you've got a link to byobu now, but the ubuntu page provides a little more of a rationale:

https://help.ubuntu.com/14.04/serverguide/byobu.html

It starts, "One of the most useful applications for any system administrator is screen. It allows the execution of multiple shells in one terminal. To make some of the advanced screen features more user friendly, and provide some useful information about the system, the byobu package was created."

In particular, it can use screen or tmux as a backend, and currently uses tmux by default.