Tmux – Troubleshooting set-titles Not Working

tmuxxterm

To start tmux on every shell login, the following was added to the ~/.bashrc (on the server):

if [ $TERM != "screen-256color" ] && [  $TERM != "screen" ]; then
    tmux attach || tmux new; exit
fi

I also want to change the window title to something like user@server (instead of user@localhost) when ssh into a host. Here's my ~/.tmux.conf:

set -g prefix C-a
unbind C-b
bind C-a send-prefix

set -g set-titles on
set -g set-titles-string "#T"

bind-key o split-window -v
bind-key e split-window -h

bind-key w kill-pane

set -g terminal-overrides 'xterm*:smcup@:rmcup@'

As you can see, set-titles was set to on, but it doesn't work as expected.

More informations:

Outside of tmux:

$ echo $TERM
xterm

Inside of tmux:

$ echo $TERM
screen

show -g: https://clbin.com/h7oDh

tmux info: http://sprunge.us/XHCB

And here're the logs when running tmux -vvvvv for a bit:

If I comment out the lines in ~/.bashrc, from my laptop, ssh to the server, the title bar shows correctly (quanta@server), then start tmux from there also works as expected.

But if I want to start tmux immediately after login, the title bar remains to be quanta@Ubuntu after ssh.

UPDATE Fri May 10 07:51:23 ICT 2013

I have deleted the exit command in order not to close the shell session when the last tmux window is closed:

if [ $TERM != "screen-256color" ] && [  $TERM != "screen" ]; then
    tmux attach || tmux new
fi

The strange thing is:

  • ssh to server -> the title bar: quanta@Ubuntu
  • detach from tmux -> the title bar switch to quanta@server
  • attach to tmux again -> the title bar still shows correctly
    quanta@server

I'm not sure if it's related to the PROMPT_COMMAND environment variable or not:

Outside of tmux:

$ echo $PROMPT_COMMAND 
echo -ne "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME%%.*}:${PWD/#$HOME/~}"; echo -ne "\007"

Inside of tmux:

$ echo $PROMPT_COMMAND
echo -ne "\033_${USER}@${HOSTNAME%%.*}:${PWD/#$HOME/~}"; echo -ne "\033\\"

Best Answer

Problem solved!

To enable native xterm mouse scrolling in tmux, a lot of wiki, Q & A site, blog post suggest adding a line like:

set -g terminal-overrides 'xterm*:smcup@:rmcup@'

to ~/.tmux.conf. And it is the culprit.

To allow xterm titles in terminal window, you also need to add the XT flag, something like this:

set -g terminal-overrides "xterm*:XT:smcup@:rmcup@"

Source: http://opennomad.com/content/goodbye-screen-hello-tmux

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