My tmux Config — Split Panes, Session Persistence & the One Plugin That Saved Me

tmux is the difference between losing a 40-minute migration to a dropped SSH session and not caring that your laptop slept. Here's the config that runs every day.

A saner prefix and instant reload

bash

# ~/.tmux.conf
unbind C-b
set -g prefix C-a          # easier to reach than C-b
bind r source-file ~/.tmux.conf \; display "reloaded"

C-a as prefix is reachable without contorting your hand. prefix r reloads the config without restarting the server.

The layout I open for every incident

bash

bind L split-window -h \; split-window -v \; select-pane -L

One keystroke gives me a three-pane layout: big shell on the left, logs top-right (journalctl -f), metrics bottom-right (watch kubectl top pods). Everything I need to watch an incident, in one window.

Named sessions per cluster

eknatha@prod ~

$ tmux new -s prod-eu

$ tmux new -s staging

$ tmux attach -t prod-eu

Naming sessions after clusters means I never fat-finger a command into the wrong environment — the session name is right there in the status bar.

The one plugin: tmux-resurrect

bash

# in .tmux.conf, via TPM
set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect'
set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-continuum'
set -g @continuum-restore 'on'

tmux-resurrect saves your entire session layout — windows, panes, working directories, even running programs — to disk. tmux-continuum auto-saves every 15 minutes and restores on server start. A reboot no longer means rebuilding six windows of context by hand.

A dropped connection should cost you nothing. tmux + resurrect is how you make that true.