Byobu exits when pressing q showing help

[Henrik J. Haar]

Manjaro linux, xfce4-terminal, bash:

Showing the help screen [Shift]+[F1].
Pressing [q] to exit help also exits byobu.

byobu also exits when selecting [Exit] in Byobu-config window.

[Didier A. (didibus)]

Can confirm on openSuse as well:

byobu version 5.127
tmux 2.9

Very annoying, I lost a lot of unsaved changes because I accidentally pressed F1 instead of F2, and on quitting the help, it killed my session.

[Dreed (stjepan-treger)]

Same thing here Ubuntu Mate 19.04

byobu version 5.127 tmux 2.8

I agree that's very annoying.

[Nestor Custodio (nestor-custodio)]

I really feel the scarcity of bug reporters here belies the severity of the issue. A terminal multiplexer that can unexpectedly kill off *any number* of operations as a result of a single misplaced keystroke seems like a pretty serious issue.

I can confirm that hitting either <F1> or <F9> will destroy the current window when you eventually <ESC> your way out of the config dialog. Likewise, <Shift> + <F1> will destroy the current window when you eventually <Q> out of that help screen. This is particularly egregious for anyone using a keyboard where the function keys serve multiple functions (e.g. laptops) and you can easily hit <F1> or <F9> while attempting to do something as innocuous as fiddling with the system volume or tweaking the display brightness.

[Isaac Andrade (isaac-nic)]

Same here on Ubuntu server 18.04
byobu version 5.125
tmux 2.9a

On host (macOS 10.14.6)
tmux 2.9a
byobu 5.129

Quitting the F1 (or Shift-F1) help windows kills the session and returns to the host.

[niwo (niwo)]

affected on:

raspian 10 "buster"
byobu version 5.112-1.1
tmux 2.8-3

not affectect for me:

raspian 9 "stretch"
byobu version 5.112-1
tmux 2.3-4

ubuntu-server 18.04
byobu 5.125-0ubuntu1
tmux 2.6-3ubuntu0.2

IIRC there was a workaround, otherwise this is pretty much useless

[Diab Jerius (djerius)]

I'm running Debian 10 (buster), tmux 2.8-3, byobu 5.112-1.1 and see the same behavior.

It appears to be related to the '-k' option to new-window in byobu's tmux bindings.

The following command creates alternate key bindings without the -k option and stores them in the users' personal tmux keybindings:

grep new-window keybindings/f-keys.tmux \
| grep ' -k' \
| sed -e 's/ -k//' \
>> ~/.byobu/keybindings.tmux

After this, things seem to work as expected

[Diab Jerius (djerius)]

I forgot the full path to the default keybinds file in my one-liner in comment #6. It should be

grep new-window /usr/share/byobu/keybindings/f-keys.tmux \
| grep ' -k' \
| sed -e 's/ -k//' \
>> ~/.byobu/keybindings.tmux

[Brad (i-ubuktu-o)]

Please, devs. This is a big deal. I've lost work due to this bug.

An amendment to djerius' workaround: you can keep the close-on-exit functionality without killing the current window if you include `-a` along with `-k`. So...

grep new-window /usr/share/byobu/keybindings/f-keys.tmux \
| grep ' -k' \
| sed -e 's/ -ak//' \
>> ~/.byobu/keybindings.tmux

[Brad (i-ubuktu-o)]

Apologies, the snippet in my previous post is wrong. This should work (followed by `F5` to reload config):

grep new-window /usr/share/byobu/keybindings/f-keys.tmux \
| grep ' -k' \
| sed -e 's/ -k/ -ak/' \
>> ~/.byobu/keybindings.tmux

[Brad (i-ubuktu-o)]

Some good news! It looks like this issue has been fixed (by removing `-k`, not adding `-ak`) as of 2019-06-01 in this rev: https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~kirkland/byobu/trunk/revision/2612

I'm not launchpad-savvy enough to know when the change will be made part of a new release (if it hasn't already), but hopefully this means a fixed version will be coming to your local package manager soon-ish (if it hasn't already).