Where is the default tmux.conf file located?

Question

I want to copy the default tmux.conf file to my home directory, but I can't find the location in Ubuntu 12.04. The man page states that the file resides at /etc/tmux.conf however this does not match with my setup.

Answer 1

You can use the current (default) settings as a starting point:

tmux show -g | cat > ~/.tmux.conf

Note the pipe to cat is required for now because of a known bug when redirecting tmux stdout to file.

Answer 2

As per dpkg -L tmux which shows you what files the package installed, there is no default tmux.conf included in the package. /etc/tmux.conf is just a location that you may use (only makes sense with multiple users using tmux) that will be evaluated before ~/.tmux.conf. You have to create your own .conf file. Have a look at this for example (first hit on google):

https://web.archive.org/web/20160308115847/http://dev.gentoo.org/~wired/conf/tmux.conf

Answer 3

The top answer's tmux show -g | cat > ~/.tmux.conf did not work for me since I got a bunch of unknown command errors.

Upon further digging it has to do with the syntax change so tmux show -g no longer generates valid config files. You must prepend every line with set -g in order for this to work or run:

tmux show -g | sed 's/^/set -g /' > ~/.tmux.conf

Answer 4

There is no default /etc/tmux.conf file. You can start with the example conf files in /usr/share/doc/tmux/examples, or look at the manual/web/etc. to come up with your own configuration file.

The examples directory contains:

/usr/share/doc/tmux/examples/n-marriott.conf
/usr/share/doc/tmux/examples/t-williams.conf
/usr/share/doc/tmux/examples/vim-keys.conf
/usr/share/doc/tmux/examples/h-boetes.conf
/usr/share/doc/tmux/examples/screen-keys.conf

Answer 5

Updated version of Daniel (2013) answer

You can use the current (default) settings as a starting point:

tmux start \; show -g | sed -e 's/^/set -g /' > ~/.tmux.conf   

GNU screen compatibility

If you just need to add GNU screen compatible key prefix (CTRLa) as described in vijay's answer

tmux start \; show -g | sed -e 's/^/set -g /' -e 's/prefix2 none/prefix2 C-a/i' > ~/.tmux.conf

new location of the config

In current versions of Ubuntu you could also store the config file in ~/.config/tmux/tmux.conf see tmux change log for version 3.1

mkdir -p ~/.config/tmux/ ; tmux start \; show -g | sed -e 's/^/set -g /' -e 's/prefix2 none/prefix2 C-a/i' > ~/.config/tmux/tmux.conf

regarding Ubuntu 12.04

The original answer was this:

tmux show -g ; cat > ~/.tmux.conf

However Ubuntu 12.04 supposedly had tmux 1.7 (citation needed). Therefor "the list-keys format so that it shows the keys using actual tmux commands which should be able to be directly copied into the config file" ( per tmux change log) has been added at least since tmux version 1.5 which means, that the above original command should not have been working in Ubuntu 12.04 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

improvements in this answer:

• incorporates Alex H's answer using set -g
• circumvents issue with no server running on /tmp/tmux-1000/default error
• ignore case in sed
• alternative path ~/.config/tmux/tmux.conf (not Ubuntu 12)
• detailing the changelog-archaeology

Note:

I actually tried to edit the top answer, but it was rejected as it incorporates changes not present in the original answer.

Answer 6

Even the command in this answer leaves syntax error in conf file.

/users/kube/.tmux.conf:35: bad key: none

I suggest below command:

tmux show -g | sed -e 's/^/set -g /' -e 's/prefix2 none/prefix2 C-a/g' > ~/.tmux.conf

This solves two problems

1. The syntax issue.
2. It allows to use extra bind-key Controla which is easy to type than Control+b

Answer 7

The config file is located in /usr/share/tmux, not in /usr/share/doc/tmux.