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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.

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To find a file with name <filename> in a directory <directoryname> use the following command: find <directory> -iname <filename>. –  green7 Sep 24 '12 at 11:32
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4 Answers

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):


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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:

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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.

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or tmux show -g | sed 's/^/set-option -g /' > ~/.tmux.conf: that would already prepend all the lines with a set -g –  Tobias Kienzler Nov 6 '13 at 13:33
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The config file is located in /usr/share/tmux, not in /usr/share/doc/tmux.

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