How to re-enable function keys in byobu?

Question

I was using byobu on Ubuntu 11.10 Server and I needed to hit a function key in an app, so I hit F9 to bring up the config menu and switched the keybinding set from "f-keys" to "screen-escape-keys". That worked, but now I can't re-enable all the f-keys.

I found a program byobu-config that brings up the menu again, and I can switch back to screen keys from there. This fixes things for new screen processes, but the effect on the current screen session is weird: it disables the Ctrl+a (screen) keys and restores F2-F8, but F9-F12 still don't do anything (they're just passed on to the foreground process).

What's up with this? Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Note: This only works if you're using Byobu with tmux as the back-end. See other answers for Byobu with screen as the back-end.

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Just press Shift+F12 To toggle F-keys on and off.

Example : Launch htop (within a Byobu pane of course) then enter Shift+F12, then if you press F3 you will search in htop processes, not switch to the left Byobu window/pane.

Related question with answer also for screen.

Answer 2

You can also toggle between the f-keys bindings and the screen-escape-keys bindings using:

ctrl-a-!

Answer 3

We can attempt to debug your particular problem, however it would be much easier to just clean out your Byobu configuration and start clean:

rm -rf ~/.byobu

On 11.04, you'll also need to remove the folder this symlink points to:

rm -rf ~/.local/share/byobu

And then start byobu.

Answer 4

In case any of the key combinations from the other answers did not work, just try this equivalent command inside Byobu:

byobu-keybindings

Answer 5

Make your ~/.byobu/keybindings look like this:

# source $BYOBU_PREFIX/share/byobu/keybindings/common
. /usr/share/byobu/keybindings/f-keys.screen.disable

and select screen as byobu's back-end via byobu-select-backend. That works in Debian, at least.