Command-Line – Terminal Limits Scrolling Solutions

Since you're clicking the Terminal icon, I assume you're using gnome-terminal.

I got a list of options by using gnome-terminal --help at the command line and reading from there.

Building on maco's answer, I might suggest something like this:

gnome-terminal --window --title=Log -e "tail -f /var/log/syslog" --window --title=Output --working-directory=output --window --active --title=Dev --working-directory=dev/project

This example starts three windows (though you could pass --tab for tabs) and sets the working directories (relative to home) and titles for each, starts the tail command in one and makes the third window active.

Of course you may prefer to use separate lines to launch each window, particularly if you have many arguments.

Another useful thing to do, once you have your windows arranged to your liking, is to use

gnome-terminal --save-config=FILE

This creates a configuration file with information on all open terminal windows and tabs (including the titles, working directories, and so forth). Launching gnome-terminal with the --load-config option will then recreate your layout.

A lot of developers who work with multiple terminals like to use Terminator as it adds features such as a grid layout and keyboard shortcuts.

The behaviour you describe sounds like your terminal was stuck in the full screen "cursor addressing" mode used by tools like less and vi.

The mode can become stuck if those programs do not exit cleanly. For instance, if you kill -9 them, or are running them through an ssh session that disconnects. You can exit this terminal mode by running the following command:

tput rmcup

Or just try browsing a file with less and quit as normal. You should then have access to your scrollback and the contents of the screen when cursor addressing mode was entered.