Category: Bubba

There are various replacements for the traditional screen command in Linux, Byobu and tmux being two good ones. Byobu is good, but after trying tmux on various Linux machines I really wanted it also on the bubba2.

As tmux doesn’t seems to be in the bubba2 or etch repositories, the next option is to build it from source. Below follow some ideas for doing this.

Note: you may need to install/upgrade gcc and other tools to complete the steps below, if you have a standard, out-of-the-box bubba2 system.

1. Switch to su and create a directory for source & resulting binaries
   su
   mkdir ~/project
   cd ~/project
2. Compile proper libevent version
   tmux needs a more recent version of libevent than installed as part of bubba2 standard setup. First remove current libevent, then compile the new one:
   apt-get remove libevent1
   mkdir ~/project/libevent
   cd ~/project/libevent
   wget http://monkey.org/~provos/libevent-1.4.14b-stable.tar.gz
   gunzip libevent-1.4.14b-stable.tar.gz
   tar xvf libevent-1.4.14b-stable.tar
   cd libevent-1.4.14b-stable
   ./configure
   make
   make install
3. Register the new libevent
   Edit /etc/ld.so.conf.d/powerpc-linux-gnu.conf, e.g. by “vim /etc/ld.so.conf.d/powerpc-linux-gnu.conf”, add the line “/usr/local/lib/” (no quotes) at the end.
4. Reload the new libevent
   Simply run “ldconfig”.
5. Compile and install tmux
   mkdir ~/project/tmux
   cd ~/project/tmux
   wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/tmux/tmux/tmux-1.5/tmux-1.5.tar.gz
   gunzip http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/tmux/tmux/tmux-1.5/tmux-1.5.tar.gz
   tar xvf http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/tmux/tmux/tmux-1.5/tmux-1.5.tar
   cd tmux-1.5
   ./configure
   make
   make install
6. Configure tmux and start using it
   First, exit from superuser mode by typing “exit”. Then, you probably want to customize tmux, try googling “tmux config file” or similar for samples. I currently use the following:# Make it use C-a, similar to screen..
   unbind C-b
   unbind l
   set -g prefix C-a
   bind-key C-a last-window
   # key bindings for splitting
   unbind %
   bind | split-window -h
   bind h split-window -h
   unbind ‘”‘
   bind – split-window -v
   bind v split-window -v# Reload key
   bind r source-file ~/.tmux.conf#set -g default-terminal “screen-256color”
   set -g default-terminal “xterm”
   set -g history-limit 4096
   # Terminal emulator window title
   set -g set-titles on
   set -g set-titles-string ‘#S:#I.#P #W’# THEME
   set -g status-bg black
   set -g status-fg white
   set -g status-interval 60
   set -g status-left-length 30
   set -g status-left ‘#[fg=green](#S) #(whoami)@#H#[default]’
   # set -g status-right ‘#[fg=yellow]#(cut -d ” ” -f 1-3 /proc/loadavg)#[default] #[fg=blue]%H:%M#[default]’
   set -g status-right-length 75
   set -g status-right ‘#[fg=red]Up #(uptime | cut -f 4-5 -d ” ” | cut -f 1 -d “,”) #[fg=black]#[fg=yellow]#(cut -d ” ” -f 1-4 /proc/loadavg) #[fg=cyan,bold]%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%
   S#[default]’
7. Start using tmux
   “tmux” starts tmux. Now you can create new windows/panes, and kill the sessions whenever you want. When you reconnect to the bubba2 over ssh, just type tmux attach and you can continue where you left off.