tmux session with multiple panes

Working with the shell usually leads to more than one open terminal. But it’s very tedious to open several terminals and bring them in place before you can start with your work. Fortunately the terminal multiplexer tmux allows you (beside other great features) to open multiple terminal sessions in a single window. And with a simple one-liner shell script you get the terminal arrangement you prefer. Here are just a few examples. At the very end you find a few useful keystrokes to handle a tmux session.

Tested with:

OS/Software	Version
Ubuntu	18.04 LTS
tmux	2.6

one pane left, two panes right

Create a executable shell script with the following content:

#!/bin/sh
tmux new-session \; split-window -h \; split-window -v \; attach

two panes left, two panes right

Create a executable shell script with the following content:

#!/bin/sh
tmux new -s '2x2 panes' \; split-window -h \; split-window -v \; select-pane -t 0 \; split-window -v \; attach

three panes left, three panes right

Create a executable shell script with the following content:

#!/bin/sh
tmux new-session \; split-window -p 66 \; select-pane -t 1 \; split-window -v \; select-pane -t 0 \; split-window -h \; select-pane -t 2 \; split-window -h \; select-pane -t 4 \; split-window -h \; select-pane -t 0

keystrokes

keystroke	description
Ctrl-B cursor	switch from one terminal to another
Ctrl-B pg-up,-down	scroll inside a terminal
Ctrl-c	leave selected mode (e.g. scrolling)
Ctrl-B d	exit tmux session*

*: To stop running tmux sessions, execute the following command:

$ tmux kill-session