Bash – How to configure bashrc to close all tmux sessions when I close the terminal

bashrctmux

I'm using Gnome Terminal and tmux and I'd like that all tmux sessions were closed when I close the Gnome Terminal, is that possible? I checked the Arch Wiki article on tmux and found some relevant code, but none of them did what I want. Right now, if I close and open the Gnome Terminal I get the the session I had, exactly how it was right before I closed the terminal with all panes and programs running. What I want is that all sessions are killed when I close Gnome Terminal.

Best Answer

Option 1: use `.bash_logout`

In your .bash_logout file you can add tmux kill-server. This won't work if you aren't in a login shell, or if the shell is killed with SIGHUP.

Option 2: Use bash traps.

This option is probably more robust. Put the following code in your .bash_profile (assuming you use bash).

function close_tmux
{
    tmux kill-server
}
trap close_tmux EXIT

Links to Additional Resources On Traps

Some background on trap statements

A blog post with plenty of trap examples

A chapter on traps from a Bash scripting guide

A Unix & Linux Stack exchange question about traps

Related Solutions

When exiting the last terminal in a tmux session can it switch to another

The closest I got was a tmux function I wrote. I normally exit the shell by hitting Ctrl+D, so I programmed tmux to exit and switch sessions when hitting [PREFIX] Ctrl+D. Put the following in your .tmux.conf:

bind C-d run-shell "                                        \
    if [ #{session_windows} -eq 1 ] &&                      \
       [ #{window_panes}    -eq 1 ] &&                      \
       [ #{pane_current_command}  = 'bash' ]; then          \
        if [ \$(tmux list-sessions | wc -l) -ge 2 ]; then   \
            tmux switch-client -ln;                         \
        fi; tmux kill-session -t \"#S\";                    \
    else                                                    \
        tmux display-message \"Ignoring kill session...\";  \
    fi;                                                     \
    "

Hit [PREFIX] Ctrl+D and it exits the current session if (and only if) it holds only one shell which is not running any other commands. It will switch to another session if possible. I use the bash shell, so you might need to change it to something you are using.

ps: in case it matters, I'm currently using tmux 1.9a.

Tmux – Force Sessions to Sort Alphabetically

Seems like tmux in versions <= 2.9a sorted sessions alphabetically, but starting from 3.1b this behavior changed. You can rebind <prefix>-s to whatever you like, in your case adding to ~/.tmux.conf following line should be sufficient:

bind s choose-tree -s -O name

From man tmux:

choose-tree [-GNrswZ] [-F format] [-f filter] [-O sort-order] [-t target-pane] [template]
     Put a pane into tree mode, where a session, window or pane may be chosen
     interactively from a list.  -s starts with sessions collapsed
     ...
     -O specifies the initial sort field: one of ‘index’, ‘name’, or ‘time’.