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@@ -0,0 +1,133 @@ +tmux frequently asked questions + +* What is tmux? How is it different from GNU screen? + +... + +* I found a bug! What do I do? + +Please send bug reports by email to nicm@users.sourceforge.net. Please +include as much of the following information as possible: + +- the version of tmux you are running; +- the operating system you are using and its version; +- the terminal emulator you are using and the TERM setting when tmux was + started; +- a description of the problem; +- if the problem is repeatable, the steps to repeat the problem; +- for screen corruption issues, a screenshot and the output of "infocmp $TERM" + from outside tmux are often very useful. + +* Why doesn't tmux do $x? + +Please send feature requests by email to nicm@users.sourceforge.net. + +* tmux freezes my terminal when I attach to a session. I even have to kill -9 + the shell it was started from to recover! + +Some consoles really really don't like attempts to set the window title. Tell +tmux not to do this by turning off the "set-titles" option: + + set -g set-titles off + +If this doesn't fix it, send a bug report. + +* Why is C-b the prefix key? How do I change it? + +The default key is C-b because the prototype of tmux was originally developed +inside screen and C-b was chosen not to interfere with the screen meta key. It +also has the advantage of not interfering with the use of C-a for start-of-line +in emacs and the shell. + +Changing is simple: change the "prefix-key" option, and - if required - move +the binding of the "send-prefix" command from C-b (C-b C-b sends C-b by +default) to the new key. For example: + + set -g prefix C-a + unbind C-b + bind C-a send-prefix + +* How do I use UTF-8? + +When running tmux in a UTF-8 capable terminal, two things must be done to +enable support. UTF-8 may be turned on separately for each tmux window or +globally by setting the "utf8" flag: + + setw -g utf8 on + +And, as it is not possible to automatically detect that a terminal is UTF-8 +capable, tmux must be told by passing the -u flag when creating or +attaching a client to a tmux session: + + $ tmux -u new + +* How do I use a 256 colour terminal? + +tmux will attempt to detect a 256 colour terminal both by looking at the Co +termcap entry and, as this is broken on some platforms for some terminals such +as xterm-256color, by looking for the string "256col" in the termcap name. + +If both these methods failed, the -2 flag may be passed to tmux when attaching +to a session to indicate the terminal supports 256 colours. + +* vim or $otherprogram doesn't display 256 colours. What's up? + +Some programs attempt to detect the number of colours a terminal is capable of +by checking the Co termcap entry. However, this is not reliable, and in any +case is missing from the "screen" termcap used inside tmux. + +There are three options to allow programs to recognise they are running on +a 256-colour terminal inside tmux: + +- Manually force the application to use 256 colours always or if TERM is set to + screen. For vim, you can do this by overriding the t_Co option, see + http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/256_colors_in_vim. +- If the platform includes it, using the "screen-256color" termcap (set + TERM=screen-256color). "infocmp screen-256color" can be used to check if this + is supported. It is not currently possible to set this globally inside tmux + but it may be done in a shell startup script by checking if TERM is screen + and exporting TERM=screen-256color instead. +- Creating a custom terminfo file that includes Co#256 in ~/.terminfo and using + it instead. These may be compiled with with tic(1). + +* How do I make Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDn work in vim? + +tmux supports passing through ctrl (and where supported by the client terminal, +alt and shift) modifiers to function keys using xterm(1)-style key sequences. +This may be enabled per window, or globally with the tmux command: + + setw -g xterm-keys on + +Because the TERM variable inside tmux must be set to "screen", vim will not +automatically detect these keys are available; however, the appropriate key +sequences can be overridden in .vimrc using the following: + + if &term == "screen" + set t_kN=^[[6;*~ + set t_kP=^[[5;*~ + endif + +And similarly for any other keys for which modifiers are desired. + +Please note that the "xterm-keys" setting may affect other programs; for +example most shells do not expect to receive xterm(1)-style key sequences so +this setting may prevent keys such as ctrl-left and ctrl-right working +correctly. tmux also passes through the ctrl (bit 5 set, for example ^[[5~ to +^[[5^) modifier in non-xterm(1) mode; it may be possible to configure vim to +accept these, an example of how to do so would be welcome. + +* Why doesn't elinks set the window title inside tmux? + +There isn't a way to detect if a terminal supports setting the window title, so +elinks attempts to guess by looking at the environment. Rather than looking for +TERM=screen, it uses the STY variable to detect if it is running in screen; +tmux does not use this so the check fails. A workaround is to set STY before +running elinks. + +The following shell function does this, and also clears the window title on +exit (elinks, for some strange reason, sets it to the value of TERM): + + elinks() { + STY= `which elinks` "$*" + echo -ne \\033]0\;\\007; + } |