tmux as an educational facilitator

[frantisek holop]

good day,

one of the most striking visible differences between screen and
tmux (as opposed to their architecture, code quality, etc) is the
philosophy behind attaching clients to an already existing server
process.

screen was "exclusivistic", latest client wins kind of guy, while
tmux is exercising a there is enough for everybody where this came
from world view.

as an old time screen user i was perplexed to see that when i
attached to an already attached tmux session, both clients were
updated real time and accepted input as well.  the ascii art with
the differing terminal window sizes is also a breakthrough idea.

so when a friend of mine asked me to coach him "unix administration"
remotely, i knew instantly that tmux will be infinitely useful for
this.  not just a poor man's vnc or remote desktop or whatever,
but the ultimate terminal experience being thaught through that
very same tool that is actually the most important for remote
adminstration.

i created a tmux user, told him to fire up putty.  we logged in
both as the tmux user, he attached to my session, and voila, the
ultimate interactive learning tool.  he was floored from moment
one about the dark powers of the terminal :]

now if only the mouse could be intercepted so it could be used as
a highligting/pointing tool, a lot of copy mode running around
could be saved, but that would be really just the topping on the
cake.

look me up when you are in prague Nicholas, you are my guest.

-f
--
strength of mind: person who can eat one salted peanut.

[Sean Howard-2]

I've seen this model used before. It's basically the best thing for teaching unix as far as I can tell - show don't tell and all that.

Now, you're bashing screen a lot in this post - ignoring the fact that screen has a "multiuser mode" which is pretty easy to activate, and does exactly the same thing. I find it comes up less that I want to attach multiple windows to a terminal.

Personally I use this script to GET AROUND that very feature:
NUM=`tmux list-sessions|grep -v \(attached\)|head -n 1|cut -b 1`                                                                                                                                                
if [ -e "$NUM" ]; then                                                                                                                                                                                          
        tmux attach-session -t $NUM                                                                                                                                                                              
else                                                                                                                                                                                                            
        tmux                                                                                                                                                                                                    
fi
(yes, I know, it fails if I have more than nine attached tmux sessions as my first nine).

However - tmux is GREAT for certain tasks, and likely better than screen. But never accuse gnu of not having enough features, they'll put it in.

Somebody claiming to be frantisek holop wrote:

> good day,
>
> one of the most striking visible differences between screen and
> tmux (as opposed to their architecture, code quality, etc) is the
> philosophy behind attaching clients to an already existing server
> process.
>
> screen was "exclusivistic", latest client wins kind of guy, while
> tmux is exercising a there is enough for everybody where this came
> from world view.
>
> as an old time screen user i was perplexed to see that when i
> attached to an already attached tmux session, both clients were
> updated real time and accepted input as well.  the ascii art with
> the differing terminal window sizes is also a breakthrough idea.
>
> so when a friend of mine asked me to coach him "unix administration"
> remotely, i knew instantly that tmux will be infinitely useful for
> this.  not just a poor man's vnc or remote desktop or whatever,
> but the ultimate terminal experience being thaught through that
> very same tool that is actually the most important for remote
> adminstration.
>
> i created a tmux user, told him to fire up putty.  we logged in
> both as the tmux user, he attached to my session, and voila, the
> ultimate interactive learning tool.  he was floored from moment
> one about the dark powers of the terminal :]
>
> now if only the mouse could be intercepted so it could be used as
> a highligting/pointing tool, a lot of copy mode running around
> could be saved, but that would be really just the topping on the
> cake.
>
> look me up when you are in prague Nicholas, you are my guest.
>
> -f
> --
> strength of mind: person who can eat one salted peanut.

[frantisek holop]

hmm, on Thu, Nov 05, 2009 at 09:32:37AM -0500, Sean Howard said that
> Now, you're bashing screen a lot in this post - ignoring the fact that
> screen has a "multiuser mode" which is pretty easy to activate, and
> does exactly the same thing. I find it comes up less that I want to
> attach multiple windows to a terminal.

a lot?  i wouldn't even say it was bashing :]

actually i have thought about going and having a look in
screen's documentation if it can do something similar to
this, but i couldn't be bothered, and i can't say i am
surprised it can.  although some docs on the net say that
you need suid for that functionality.

it was not really the point of my mail.
the point was how easy and intuitive it is with tmux.

-f
--
light at end of tunnel will be out until further notice.

[Sean Howard-2]

       multiuser on|off

       Switch  between  singleuser  and  multiuser mode. Standard
       screen operation is singleuser. In multiuser mode the com-
       mands  `acladd',  `aclchg',  `aclgrp'  and `acldel' can be
       used to enable (and disable) other  users  accessing  this
       screen session.
--Screen's manpage
I don't know anything about needing SUID - but I believe it's happened without.

Now, I am just defending screen, but - sure - tmux is *much* better at multiwindow sessions. And yeah - I do use tmux primarily personally.

My apologies if I mistook the beginning of your post it looked to me like "tmux is better at this, tmux is better than screen".

Somebody claiming to be frantisek holop wrote:

> hmm, on Thu, Nov 05, 2009 at 09:32:37AM -0500, Sean Howard said that
> > Now, you're bashing screen a lot in this post - ignoring the fact that
> > screen has a "multiuser mode" which is pretty easy to activate, and
> > does exactly the same thing. I find it comes up less that I want to
> > attach multiple windows to a terminal.
>
> a lot?  i wouldn't even say it was bashing :]
>
> actually i have thought about going and having a look in
> screen's documentation if it can do something similar to
> this, but i couldn't be bothered, and i can't say i am
> surprised it can.  although some docs on the net say that
> you need suid for that functionality.
>
> it was not really the point of my mail.
> the point was how easy and intuitive it is with tmux.
>
> -f
> --
> light at end of tunnel will be out until further notice.

[Daniel Bolgheroni-4]

On Thu, 5 Nov 2009, frantisek holop wrote:

> as an old time screen user i was perplexed to see that when i
> attached to an already attached tmux session, both clients were
> updated real time and accepted input as well.  the ascii art with
> the differing terminal window sizes is also a breakthrough idea.

$ screen -x

--
Daniel Bolgheroni
FEI - Faculdade de Engenharia Industrial
http://www.dbolgheroni.eng.br/mykey

ASCII ribbon campaign ( )
 against HTML e-mail   X
                      / \

[frantisek holop]

thanks everyone on/off-list for pointing out
that screen can do this as well.

it was not the point of my mail though.
it was not a pissing contest what screen and tmux
can/can't do.

everyone can now stop sending screen -x, thank you.

$ screen -x
ksh: screen: not found

-f
--
if they can send a man to the moon...  why not send 'em all?

[Marc Espie-2]

On Thu, Nov 05, 2009 at 02:15:30PM +0100, frantisek holop wrote:
> as an old time screen user i was perplexed to see that when i
> attached to an already attached tmux session, both clients were
> updated real time and accepted input as well.  the ascii art with
> the differing terminal window sizes is also a breakthrough idea.

screen also does ascii art on different window sizes...

[Marc Espie-2]

On Fri, Nov 06, 2009 at 12:21:12AM +0100, frantisek holop wrote:
> thanks everyone on/off-list for pointing out
> that screen can do this as well.
>
> it was not the point of my mail though.
> it was not a pissing contest what screen and tmux
> can/can't do.

How about you go off this list for a while, and find out how to write
messages that contain the information YOU want, instead of the information
YOU actually put in them.

Unless you enjoy trolling, in which case you should learn not to complain
about the resulting flamage...