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Asked: 2012-02-09 13:28:34 +0800 CST

How do I send a literal F6/etc. in byobu?

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In a byobu screen, I ssh'ed into another computer and launched byobu on that computer. Now, I have byobu within byobu.

How can I send byobu keystrokes (F2, F3, F6, etc) to the inner byobu rather than the outer? In other words, how do I escape or otherwise transmit these keys to the screen rather than having the outer byobu intercept them?

byobu screen

3 Answers

  1. Shift-F12                   Toggle on/off Byobu's keybindings

    Keystrokes will be send to the inner byobu.

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  2. Best Answer

    For byobu-within-byobu, you need to know the original, non-f-key bindings for each of the f-key commands.

    So for F6, for example, that's really ctrl-a-d for detach.

    You can then send the detach signal to the inner session using ctrl-a-a-d. And that scales well with the depth of the nested sessions. So for byobu-within-byobu-within-byobu, you'd use ctrl-a-a-a-d.

    There is an alternative, which is what I personally use... You could set a different escape key for the inner byobu. I typically use ctrl-a for the outer one, and ctrl-b for the inner one. In this way, ctrl-a-d would detach the outer session, and ctrl-b-d would detach the inner session.

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  3. Ctrl-A or F12 works with a single byobu, but I'm not sure about a byobu within a byobu. See: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Byobu

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