tmux is a terminal multiplexer: it enables a number of terminals to
be created, accessed, and controlled from a single screen. tmux
may be detached from a screen and continue running in the
background, then later reattached.
When tmux is started it creates a new session with a single window
and displays it on screen. A status line at the bottom of the
screen shows information on the current session and is used to
enter interactive commands.
A session is a single collection of pseudo terminals under the
management of tmux. Each session has one or more windows linked to
it. A window occupies the entire screen and may be split into
rectangular panes, each of which is a separate pseudo terminal (the
pty(4) manual page documents the technical details of pseudo
terminals). Any number of tmux instances may connect to the same
session, and any number of windows may be present in the same
session. Once all sessions are killed, tmux exits.
Each session is persistent and will survive accidental
disconnection (such as ssh(1) connection timeout) or intentional
detaching (with the 'C-b d' key strokes). tmux may be reattached
using:
$ tmux attach
In tmux, a session is displayed on screen by a client and all
sessions are managed by a single server. The server and each
client are separate processes which communicate through a socket in
/tmp.
The options are as follows:
-2 Force tmux to assume the terminal supports 256
colours. This is equivalent to -T 256.
-C Start in control mode (see the CONTROL MODE section).
Given twice (-CC) disables echo.
-c shell-command
Execute shell-command using the default shell. If
necessary, the tmux server will be started to
retrieve the default-shell option. This option is
for compatibility with sh(1) when tmux is used as a
login shell.
-D Do not start the tmux server as a daemon. This also
turns the exit-empty option off. With -D, command
may not be specified.
-f file Specify an alternative configuration file. By
default, tmux loads the system configuration file
from @SYSCONFDIR@/tmux.conf, if present, then looks
for a user configuration file at ~/.tmux.conf.
The configuration file is a set of tmux commands
which are executed in sequence when the server is
first started. tmux loads configuration files once
when the server process has started. The source-file
command may be used to load a file later.
tmux shows any error messages from commands in
configuration files in the first session created, and
continues to process the rest of the configuration
file.
-L socket-name
tmux stores the server socket in a directory under
TMUX_TMPDIR or /tmp if it is unset. The default
socket is named default. This option allows a
different socket name to be specified, allowing
several independent tmux servers to be run. Unlike
-S a full path is not necessary: the sockets are all
created in a directory tmux-UID under the directory
given by TMUX_TMPDIR or in /tmp. The tmux-UID
directory is created by tmux and must not be world
readable, writable or executable.
If the socket is accidentally removed, the SIGUSR1
signal may be sent to the tmux server process to
recreate it (note that this will fail if any parent
directories are missing).
-l Behave as a login shell. This flag currently has no
effect and is for compatibility with other shells
when using tmux as a login shell.
-N Do not start the server even if the command would
normally do so (for example new-session or
start-server).
-S socket-path
Specify a full alternative path to the server socket.
If -S is specified, the default socket directory is
not used and any -L flag is ignored.
-u Write UTF-8 output to the terminal even if the first
environment variable of LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, or LANG
that is set does not contain "UTF-8" or "UTF8". This
is equivalent to -T UTF-8.
-T features Set terminal features for the client. This is a
comma-separated list of features. See the
terminal-features option.
-v Request verbose logging. Log messages will be saved
into tmux-client-PID.log and tmux-server-PID.log
files in the current directory, where PID is the PID
of the server or client process. If -v is specified
twice, an additional tmux-out-PID.log file is
generated with a copy of everything tmux writes to
the terminal.
The SIGUSR2 signal may be sent to the tmux server
process to toggle logging between on (as if -v was
given) and off.
-V Report the tmux version.
command [flags]
This specifies one of a set of commands used to
control tmux, as described in the following sections.
If no commands are specified, the new-session command
is assumed.
