Leaving tmux scrollback in terminal (iTerm2)

Question

Usually tmux will only show as much output as however many rows my terminal currently displays. And then when I detach it, it clears all of its content. I know how to look at scrollback (ctrl+A, [, k, ...), but how can I configure tmux to just print all its output to terminal, as if I wasn't using it at all?

I like tmux because I'm awful at remembering to nohup certain tasks, and because it makes viewing the output of long-running jobs easier. But I would like to be able to view its scrollback more naturally, by simply scrolling back in iTerm2.

Alternatively, if there's a way to do this in screen, I can use that too.

Answer 1

iTerm2 build 1.0.0.20130302 has an preference which enables it to capture scrollback even when a so-called hard status line is present:

Works for me, tested with tmux v1.8.

Answer 2

I stumbled across an alternative solution on Superuser.com: Use terminal scrollbar with tmux. Add this to your ~/.tmux.conf:

# Pretend our terminal doesn't support alternative screens, and thus all text 
# should be placed into the scrollback buffer when it goes off the top of the 
# screen.
#
# https://superuser.com/questions/310251/use-terminal-scrollbar-with-tmux
set-option -ga terminal-overrides ',xterm*:smcup@:rmcup@'

Works for me with gnome-terminal v3.4.1.1 and tmux v1.9

Answer 3

Add this to your ~/.tmux.conf and you will be able to enter copy mode just by scrolling:

setw -g mode-mouse on

You may also want to enable other mouse features:

set -g mouse-resize-pane on
set -g mouse-select-pane on
set -g mouse-select-window on

See this excellent write-up of these features: http://tangledhelix.com/blog/2012/07/16/tmux-and-mouse-mode/

Answer 4

In my case, just putting set-option -g status off in .tmux.conf allows to leave the scrollback in the terminal. But you lose the status bar.