Tips and tricks on using Unix systems

Shortcuts in the terminal

Suppose you want a quick shortcut to get to your workspace and source it. Create an alias command and add it to your .bashrc file. For example suppose I want a new command goAndre we will add a line to ~/.bashrc such as

alias goAndre="cd ~/andre_ws; source devel/setup.bash"

Terminal multiplexing

If you're on a remote system through ssh and you want multiple terminals or if you want multiple terminals in the same window on a local system, you can use tmux to create splits and windows. Install by running

sudo apt install tmux

A good cheatsheet is available. However here are the basic shortcuts you need to know:

• Before running any commands below you must first hit the prefix command ctrl + b.
• % Split window vertically
• " Split window horizontally
• arrowkey Move to a split in that direction
• x Kill a pane
• c Create a window
• n Go to next window
• & Kill window (and all the panes in it)

If you lost connection to a robot but it stayed on (e.g. you had to reboot your local machine), you can regain control of your tmux session by attaching to it. e.g.

ssh asctec@firefly_green
tmux
# do stuff and the lose connection
ssh asctec@firefly_green
tmux a
# regain the previous session

If you temporarily lost connection to a robot (e.g. had to unplug and replug and ethernet cable) you'll notice that your tmux session will simply be regained (this is the main advantage of tmux over screen).

Saving tmux configurations

Suppose you have a multi-terminal setup with multiple commands to execute in each terminal and you want to setup everything and run all your commands using a single command. Use tmuxp.

TODO add example config used in the Husky for Activeslam.