Ubuntu – Exiting scrollback mode in byobu

Running metacity --replace does not make it run as a daemon. If you hit Ctrl-C or otherwise stop that metacity process from running (closing terminal would do that as well), you will be left without a window manager. That is why you lose your window decorations. I am not exactly sure why the keyboard stops functioning (my guess is that once the window manager is closed new updates to the window, like typing, won't be painted to the screen), but I have tested this and if you hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 you can still drop to the framebuffer. Clearly the keyboard has not stopped working entirely, in fact if you click a menu item in gnome-terminal you can use the up and down arrows to navigate it.

You should run metacity in a wrapper, such as screen, when you need to start it from terminal and then close the terminal window you used. Just run screen metacity --replace and press Ctrl+A+D to detach from the screen process.

Or, you can simply use Byobu's hotkey for this:

• Shift-F7

That will take your history and put it into $BYOBU_RUN_DIR/printscreen.