On my servers, I like to have two things:

• ~/README.md which documents everything that’s installed on the server machine; its purpose, paths, commands, etc etc
• A Tmux startup script which runs all programs, supposed to be running on the server, in tmux

First, install tmux via sudo apt install tmux. Then, let’s create a script which will:

• create a tmux session named startup (it’s just a name, you can use foo equally well)
• create windows and run commands in that session
• connect to it

Create a script named ~/startup with the following contents:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
SESSION="startup"

# If session already exists → just attach
tmux has-session -t "$SESSION" 2>/dev/null && {
  tmux attach-session -t "$SESSION"
  exit
}

# Otherwise create it from scratch (detached)
tmux new-session -s "$SESSION" -d -n window1 -d
tmux send-keys -t "$SESSION:window1" "cd work && ls -la" C-m
tmux new-window -t "$SESSION" -n window2 -d
tmux send-keys -t "$SESSION:window2" "cd Documents && ls -la" C-m
tmux attach-session -t "$SESSION"

The tmux scripting is horrible, so I’ll explain:

• new-session -n stats creates a new session and ALSO a new window named stats. The window will run your shell automatically.
• send-keys ./stats Enter will run the ~/stats script in the shell, without terminating the shell.
• new-window -n growatt creates a new window named growatt.
• send-keys ./growatt Enter runs the ~/growatt script in the shell.

I simply run this script manually after the server boots up, from a ssh session.

Configuration

To change the color scheme and to change the hot key to C-a, create ~/.tmux.conf:

# Set the prefix to Ctrl+a
set -g prefix C-a

# Remove the old prefix
unbind C-b

# Send Ctrl+a to applications by pressing it twice
bind C-a send-prefix

set -g status-bg cyan
set -g window-status-style bg=yellow
set -g window-status-current-style bg=red,fg=white

Hotkeys

• C-a ? shows keyboard help
• C-a d detaches from tmux
• To reattach to a running session, just run ./startup
• C-a c for new window
• C-a n/C-a p for next/prev window
• C-a then [ to scroll; hjkl and C-d/C-u works with cursor movements