tmux

tmux is a terminal multiplexer. It lets you switch easily between several programs in one terminal, detach them (they keep running in the background) and reattach them to a different terminal. And do a lot more.

Installation

sudo apt install tmux

or on Mac

brew install tmux

Usage

Let’s assume you are via ssh on a remote server and you want to run a long running process. You can use tmux to run the process in a session and then detach from it. You can then log out and log back in later to check on the process. Your process will still be running, even if your ssh session is closed.

On the remote server

tmux new -s myprocess

Then run your process. When you are done, detach from the session by pressing Ctrl+b and then d.

On the remote server later

tmux ls

This will list all the sessions. You can then reattach to the session you want by typing:

tmux attach -t myprocess

Panes

You can split your terminal into panes. This is useful if you want to run multiple processes in the same terminal. You can split the terminal vertically by pressing Ctrl+b and then " or horizontally by pressing Ctrl+b and then %.

To move panes around, you can use Ctrl+b and then o to cycle through the panes.

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Landrum, Gregory A., Jessica Braun, Paul Katzberger, Marc T. Lehner, and Sereina Riniker. 2024. “Lwreg: A Lightweight System for Chemical Registration and Data Storage.” Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling 64 (16): 6247–52. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jcim.4c01133.

Orsi, Markus, and Jean-Louis Reymond. 2024. “One Chiral Fingerprint to Find Them All.” Journal of Cheminformatics 16 (1): 53.