Ubuntu – Why Byobu custom status notification code fail to show in color

bashbyobuscriptsserver

The code below runs well in Bash and shows text with proper green background color but when I add it to the ~/.byobu/bin/ folder it shows the escape characters instead. Something like [42m[1mAAPL:30.345 (B[m

#!/bin/sh
echo `tput setab 2;tput bold`AAPL:`curl -s 'http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=AAPL&f=sl1d1t1c1ohgv&e=.csv' | cut -d, -f2;tput sgr0`

Best Answer

If using the tmux backend for byobu, you will need to use a different format for color codes. Luckily, it's less complicated than the screen format.

To set colors, use #[<color and attribute codes>]. Examples:

#[default]: restore default colors (use at the end of your custom status).
#[fg=red]: set the foreground color to red.
#[fg=#ff0000]: set the foreground color to #ff0000. Only accepts lowercase -- FF0000 won't work.
#[bg=black]: makes the background black.
#[fg=bold]: makes text bold. See below for more.
#[reverse]: swaps foreground/background colors.

You can combine them, e.g. #[fg=white,bold,bg=black].

Named colors: black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white, black, brightblack, brightred, brightgreen, brightyellow, brightblue, brightmagenta, brightcyan, brightwhite

Attributes: dim, underscore, bold, reverse, standout, blinking, hidden, italics

You can also use the environment variables $BYOBU_LIGHT, $BYOBU_DARK, $BYOBU_ACCENT, and $BYOBU_HIGHLIGHT as colors.

To play with this, create a file, ~/.byobu/bin/1_hello with the following contents, and make it executable.

#!/bin/sh
echo "#[reverse]Hello world#[default]"

This should create a black-on-white status notification that says "Hello world".

Here are two example custom status bar components, and the codes that produce them:

#[fg=#aa77cc,bg=#222222] @XXX.XX #[default]
#[fg=white,bg=black] ✉ ️X #[default]

This information will probably only work if you're using tmux and a color-enabled shell, though :)

(Sources: /usr/lib/byobu/include/colors, /usr/lib/byobu/include/shutil)

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Ubuntu – Byobu doesn’t show the colourful status line

In you case, you have explicitly disabled your status line, as you can tell by the flag file status.disable. You can either remove this file or run byobu-quiet --undo.

It looks like you figured this out and answered your own question in the comment. As to your new question in your comment, we have disabled a few of the infrequently used and hard to maintain menu options, which includes the background/foreground color setting.

To set the foreground/background colors, you have two options now:

Press ctrl-shift-F5 to set it to a random 256-color combination
Or manually edit $HOME/.byobu/color.tmux

Full disclosure: I'm the author and maintainer of Byobu.

Ubuntu – Can byobu (tmux) show a multiline status

Not easily, no. Unfortunately, tmux only supports a single status line at a time. That's a function of tmux, and not byobu.

What you can do, however, is configure multiple status lines and cycle through them using shift-F5. You'll only be able to see one at a time, but you can cycle through them with a single keystroke.

You can define and customize these in your ~/.byobu/status file. Here's a snippet:

# Tmux has one status line, with 2 halves for status
# You can have as many tmux right lines below here, and cycle through them using Shift-F5
#tmux_right="network #disk_io custom #entropy raid reboot_required updates_available #apport #services #mail users uptime #ec2_cost #rcs_cost #fan_speed #cpu_temp battery wifi_quality #processes load_average cpu_count cpu_freq memory #swap #disk #whoami #hostname ip_address #time_utc date time"
#tmux_right="#network disk_io #custom entropy #raid #reboot_required #updates_available #apport #services #mail #users #uptime #ec2_cost #rcs_cost fan_speed cpu_temp #battery #wifi_quality #processes #load_average #cpu_count #cpu_freq #memory #swap whoami hostname ip_address #time_utc disk date time"
tmux_left=" logo #distro release #arch"
tmux_right=" network disk_io custom entropy raid reboot_required updates_available #apport #services #mail users uptime #ec2_cost #rcs_cost fan_speed cpu_temp battery wifi_quality #processes load_average cpu_count cpu_freq memory #swap #disk #whoami #hostname ip_address #time_utc date time"

Best Answer

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