Arch Linux

tibdm

Member

Registered: 2019-03-31

Posts: 1

tmux CTRL-arrow keys not working

Hello,

For the first time, I've made a fresh Arch Linux install on my new laptop and haven't yet installed any display manager nor any desktop environment, meaning I'm currently experimenting straight from the TTY. I've got some experience using tmux on headless servers running Debian and FreeBSD where I'm able to resize tmux panes using the default CTRL-b CTRL-Up/Right/Down/Left arrow key combinations.

Unfortunately, I just discovered that using those key combinations from the tty command line that is presented right after booting into Arch Linux doesn't work
At present those key combinations have no effect. As was the case with the various other combinations I tried.

I've tried unbinding the default arrow keys in ~/.tmux.conf in hope that re-allocating them to a different key combination would work but to no avail.
My initial goal was to bind ALT-arrow keys to resizing (without prior use of CTRL-b), so what I first tried in .tmux.conf was:

unbind M-Up
unbind M-right
unbind M-Down
unbind M-Left

bind -r -n M-Up resize-pane -U
bind -r -n M-Right resize-pane -R
bind -r -n M-Down resize-pane -D
bind -r -n M-Left resize-pane -L

But, as I said, it didn't work.

I've tried other combinations like:

bind -r -n C-Up resize-pane -U
bind -r -n C-Right resize-pane -R
bind -r -n C-Down resize-pane -D
bind -r -n C-Left resize-pane -L

or

bind -r M-Up resize-pane -U
bind -r M-Right resize-pane -R
bind -r M-Down resize-pane -D
bind -r M-Left resize-pane -L

and

bind -r C-Up resize-pane -U
bind -r C-Right resize-pane -R
bind -r C-Down resize-pane -D
bind -r C-Left resize-pane -L

But the "default" behavior of the arrow keys seems to prevail, i.e. usage of ALT-Right/Left or CTRL-b ALT-Right/Left switches from one tty to the next, while ALT-Up/Down or CTRL-b ALT-Up/Down moves in the command line history...
The only usage of the arrow keys that works as expected is CTRL-b Up/Right/Down/Left which activates the sibling pane in the direction indicated by the pressed arrow.

Assigning pane resizing functions to other keys (I tried i-l-k-j) works as expected though.

I don't know what I'm missing here, and maybe it is pretty obvious, but, even after reading the Arch's Wiki about tmux, browsing Arch's forum and Googling in search of a solution I couldn't figure out how to be able to resize tmux panes using an arrow key combination...

Any suggestion will be welcome.

Thank you.