Categories
Technical

Byobu

Byobu is a light, powerful, text-based window manager based on GNU Screen. Using Byobu, you can quickly create and move between different windows over a single SSH connection or TTY terminal, monitor dozens of important statistics about your system, detach and reattach to sessions later while your programs continue to run in the background.

Byobu can be configured to run by default at every text login (SSH or TTY). That behavior can be toggled with the byobu-enable and byobu-disable commands.

In your remote ssh session type the following

byobu-enable

or

byobu-disable

Byobu displays two lines at the bottom of your screen. The upper one is the Caption line, and the lower one is the Hard Status

The Caption line shows your open windows, and highlights the one upon which you are focused, and optionally displays your user name, host name, IP address, and a hint that there is a Menu available if you press F9.

The Hard Status line consists of color coded output and symbols with configurable and dynamically updated facts, statistics, and information about the local system. See the Status Notifications section below for more information.

Some users may find the Hard Status line distracting. The byobu-quiet command will disable the display of the Hard Status. Append –undo to revert this configuration change.

Some other users may find both the Hard Status and Caption distracting. In this case, the byobu-silent command will disable both lines. Again, append –undo to revert the change.

 

Byobu provides a comprehensive, advanced set of commands bound to the F-keys on most keyboards.

F2 Create a new window
F3 Move to the next window
F4 Move to the previous window
F5 Refresh all status notifications
F6 Detach from the session and logout
Shift-F6 Detach from the session, but do not logout
F7 Enter scrollback/search mode
F8 Rename the current window
F9 Launch the Byobu Configuration Menu
F12 GNU Screen’s Escape Key
Alt-Pageup Scroll back through this window’s history
Alt-Pagedown Scroll forward through this window’s history
Shift-F2 Split the screen horizontally
Ctrl-F2 Split the screen vertically
Shift-F3 Move focus to the next split
Shift-F4 Move focus to the previous split
Shift-F5 Collapse all splits
Ctrl-F5 Reconnect any SSH/GPG sockets or agents
Ctrl-a-! Toggle all of Byobu’s keybindings on or off