[alecsm]

I had my tmux customized to the point I forgot how to use it on a clean install which is a problem when I'm sshing into a server.

I wish it had better defaults but now I run it as is. After a while you get used to it. The only thing I always have to change is the mouse scroll and my brain cannot retain the exact command.

[dpflan]

Do you have a "dot files" repo? It would contain things like this, config files for tmux, zsh, <other tools>, etc.

[esseph]

That may work for a server or two but doesn't really pan out for fleet management.

[lanstin]

Volunteer to be the official image maintainer - I had emacs-nox and (screen) installed fleet wide for my own utility :)

I had a friend that even had his public keys added to the /root/.ssh/ but I didin't go that far -I didn't even put my own .emacs out - but I at least could use good tools to look at the tcpdump output or giant log files if needed. "Eight Megs and Constantly Swapping" is not that big of a deal anymore.

And if people want to just use some default open source image, just point out that in modern cloud environments, you don't want each node to customize itself, you want to pre-run that process one time per node type in your "directed graph of image delta pipelines" which takes the input image and publishes the cloud ready app-specific images (with your DNS configs, LDAP integration, whatever, plus emacs/neovim and screen/tmux :)

[mystifyingpoi]

This will definitely work, but it's not really even necessary. Just have some pre-connect script, that checks if the host is already "configured", and if not, then one-shot some Ansible playbook (or bash even) that installs what's needed. Use /tmp if root is not available. Also works for Kubernetes, though there we have better options.

[esseph]

One of my favs: https://github.com/nicolaka/netshoot

[throwa356262]

Is it not just easier to accept the default config?

[bch]

I think of this as the curse of Emacs. Infinitely configurable, thereafter entirely unique in the universe, which can be a double edged sword. See too (maybe it's the same thing) The Lisp Curse.[0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2450973

[MisterTea]

Total opposite. I adapt to the defaults meaning I almost never customize anything. Tmux? Game controls? UI look? Default. I am almost never met with surprise unless I am sitting in front of someones OCD config.

[carodgers]

I've hit this problem multiple times. The approach which finally eased this pain point for me was to take care to not overwrite any tmux defaults with my config, and only add non-conflicting configs (new shortcuts, styling changes, etc.) That way, if I need to use tmux on a new or unfamiliar machine, the core functionality is still present, and I just miss the candy that comes with customization.

For example, leave the existing prefix binding (ctrl-b), but also add something nicer for day-to-day use (ctrl-space or similar).

[znpy]

> I had my tmux customized to the point I forgot how to use it on a clean install which is a problem when I'm sshing into a server.

I had the same issue with gnu emacs… but at some point i lost my very custom configuration when the disk broke… i resorted to use a mostly-vanilla emacs :)

[NobleLie]

"Claude, scp my tmux config over to that box"

[orthecreedence]

God I hope this is a joke

[alt219]

Why not just `scp ~/.tmux.conf remotehost:`?

[al_borland]

I can't speak for the parent, but I rarely login to the same remote server twice and don't want to need to set things up and clean them up anytime I do. This is why I try to keep my stuff as close to vanilla as possible. If anything goes wrong on a server and someone sees I have a whole bunch of dot files to customize my config, it becomes a red herring that I have to spend time explaining away.

[cr125rider]

If only we had ways to automate repeating processes… oh well

[traderj0e]

No, wanting to keep things vanilla when you're dealing with lots of random servers is a valid concern. Just because you can solve this with shell scripting doesn't mean you should.

[skydhash]

You could always copy the config to /tmp and use the -f flag.

[monsieurbanana]

Sometimes I ssh into a server as a specific user (e.g. as the "app" user that is used to run a web app), sometimes only root is available (probably not best practice, but it's not like I can or want to fix it myself).

In any case it's not practical to carry your dotfiles everywhere you go. Changes are also a hassle to propagate

[alecsm]

Because I'm not the owner of the remote host.