My Tmux config

Tmux is a great alternative to gnu screen. I can’t believe I’ve never posted my custom Tmux config for Cygwin after all the work I put into it years ago. So here it is. Its features include:

• Uses ctrl+a, like gnu screen, instead of ctrl+b
• Mouse interaction is enabled
• Tab bar/windows:
  • Current tab is highlighted in cyan
  • Cycle through tabbed windows with a click on its tab or ctrl+arrowkeys
  • Reorder tabbed windows with a drag of its tab or alt+arrowkeys
  • ctrl+a,/ to rename a tab on the tab bar
  • Create new window with ctrl+a,c
• Panes
  • Create split panes with vertical=ctrl+a,| and horizontal=ctrl+a,-
  • Move around panes with click or ctrl+shift+arrowkeys
  • Resize panes by dragging on the separator bar or use ctrl+shift+alt+arrowkeys
  • Panes automatically resize to fit OS window
• Clipboard/highlighting
  • Copy text to clipboard by highlighting it. Had to use a minor hack to fix a cygwin selection problem
  • Paste from clipboard with right click
  • Middle mouse button+drag starts copy mode
    • When in copy mode, u runs the selection as a command in a separate window (Instead of “cygstart” for cygwin, use “xdg-open” for linux, or “open” for MacOS X)
  • Double click selects word
  • Double middle click runs the word under the mouse as a command
• Start the session on the current bash directory
• Escape time is lowered for quicker response to scroll buffer access (ctrl+a,pageup)

To use this, save the file to ~/.tmux.conf

#Set current directory setting for cygwin
set-environment -g CHERE_INVOKING 1

#Mouse interaction
set -g mouse on

#Lower escape timing from 500ms to 50ms for quicker response to scroll-buffer access
set -s escape-time 50

#Window always takes up largest possible max size
set-window-option -g aggressive-resize

#Highlight active window in tab-bar at bottom in cyan
set-window-option -g window-status-current-bg cyan

#Reorder windows in status bar by drag & drop
bind-key -n MouseDrag1Status swap-window -t=

#Copy to clipboard on text selection in cygwin. Move cursor position 1 to the right before copy to bypass a bug
bind -Tcopy-mode MouseDragEnd1Pane send-keys -X cursor-right\; send -X copy-selection-and-cancel\; run-shell -b "tmux show-buffer > /dev/clipboard"

#Paste from clipboard with right click in cygwin
bind-key -n MouseDown3Pane run-shell 'tmux set-buffer -b winclip "$(cat /dev/clipboard)"'\; paste-buffer -db winclip

#Middle drag starts copy mode
bind -n MouseDrag2Pane copy-mode -M

#When in copy mode, "u" runs the selection as a command in a separate window (Instead of "cygstart" for cygwin, use "xdg-open" for linux, or "open" for MacOS X)
bind -Tcopy-mode u send -X copy-selection-and-cancel\; run-shell -b "tmux show-buffer | xargs cygstart"

#Double click selects word
bind-key -n DoubleClick1Pane copy-mode -M\; send-keys -X select-word

#Double middle click runs the word under the mouse as a command. See description for MouseDown3Pane above
bind-key -n DoubleClick2Pane copy-mode -M\; send-keys -X select-word\; send -X copy-selection-and-cancel\; run-shell -b "tmux show-buffer | xargs cygstart"

#Remap prefix to Control+a
set -g prefix C-a
unbind C-b
#bind 'C-a C-a' to type 'C-a'
bind C-a send-prefix

#Start in CWD when creating or splitting tabs; move the splitting planes keys to | and -
bind '|' split-window -h -c '#{pane_current_path}'  # Split panes horizontal
bind '-' split-window -v -c '#{pane_current_path}'  # Split panes vertically
bind c new-window -c '#{pane_current_path}' # Create new window
unbind '"'
unbind %

#prefix, / -- Renames window, but starts blank
bind-key / command-prompt "rename-window '%%'"

#Select next/prev window with Ctrl+(Left|Right)
bind-key -n C-Right next-window
bind-key -n C-Left previous-window

#Reorder window with Alt+(Left|Right)
bind-key -n M-Left swap-window -t -1
bind-key -n M-Right swap-window -t +1

#Switch panes using Ctrl+Shift+arrow
bind -n C-S-Left select-pane -L
bind -n C-S-Right select-pane -R
bind -n C-S-Up select-pane -U
bind -n C-S-Down select-pane -D

#Resize panes using Ctrl+Shift+Alt+arrow
bind-key -n C-S-M-Up resize-pane -U 1
bind-key -n C-S-M-Down resize-pane -D 1
bind-key -n C-S-M-Left resize-pane -L 1
bind-key -n C-S-M-Right resize-pane -R 1

Automatic disconnect protection for SSH terminals

A simple solution for a simple problem

I got tired a long time ago of losing what I was currently working on in SSH sessions when they were lost due to disconnects from network connectivity issues. To combat this I have been using screen when running sessions that I can absolutely not lose, but the problem still persists in other sessions or when I forgot to run it. The easy solution to this was to add screen to one of my bash init scripts (~/.bashrc [or ~/.bash_profile]) as follows:

alias autoscreen="screen -x -RR && exit"
if [[ "$TERM" == cygwin* || "$TERM" == xterm* ]]; then autoscreen; fi

This automatically makes the screen command run on bash user initialization, always connecting to the same session.

Edit on 2012-12-17 @ 7:00pm:
The last iteration was:

if [ $TERM == "xterm" ]; then screen -R pts-0.`hostname` && exit; fi

• The main screen command is now an “alias” to help out with some bash parsing problems.
• The resume parameters are now “-x -RR” which first attempts to multiplex a session, and if that fails, it creates a session. With multiplexing turned on, everyone uses the same screen session and can interact with each other, and you don’t have to worry about accidentally connecting to the wrong screen session or having new ones turned on. The only problem is sometimes you may accidentally step on other user’s toes :-)
• The special screen session name was removed so it always starts with the default name (easier to manually interact with)
• I added detection of multiple term names (cygwin and xterm), and added a wildcard at the end of each since there is often suffixes to these names. More term names can easily be added using this syntax.

Edit on 2010-12-30 @ 3:50am: I changed != "screen" to == "xterm" because otherwise scp and some other non-term programs were failing. You may have to use something other than “xterm” for your systems.

Edit on 2010-1-24 @ 2:00pm: I added the exit; so the terminal automatically exits when the screen session closes.