[Oneiric-Topic] Byobu

[Dustin Kirkland]

On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 11:48 AM, Clint Byrum <clint at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Excerpts from Dustin Kirkland's message of Fri Apr 01 07:08:31 -0700 2011:
>> 2011/4/1 Raphaël Pinson <raphink at gmail.com>:
>> > Also, a few years back, I had begun to work on making screen ACLs
>> > easier in byobu, but had not found the time to finish that part. Since
>> > Ubuntu encourages the use of user accounts vs root, this is a feature
>> > that could be very useful on Ubuntu servers I think.
>>
>> That's a great idea, Raphael.  Actually, I was talking with Dave
>> Walker about this recently.  Basically, I'm just going to move the
>> screen configuration magic from screenbin into byobu, and I think
>> we'll have almost everything we need.
>>
>
> Maybe I'm missing something here.. but this seems to happen to me
> whenever I enable "byobu by default" (last time I did this in earnest
> was for a week around 10.10 beta1, but I simluated it again just now on
> natty beta1 to confirm its still this way):

Clint,

We're talking about two different things.  What you're talking about
is the behavior of one system user on the system, logging in multiple
times, from multiple different places.

We're talking about GNU screen's built in ACL feature, where one user
can share a session (optionally with read/write, or read/only) to a
different system user.  So user 'kirkland' could share his session
with user 'Spamaps', or 'guest'.

> [ from inside byobu ]
> clint at laptop:~$ sshlucid-box-that-has-byobu-on
>
> I know that had it been a later release it would ask me about the nested
> session. I am not sure that is all that great as well, how about just
> making the default answer N and not even asking? I know sometimes you
> do want a nested session... but I'd bet guess thats a special case and
> usually not what users want, and is handled very well by running 'byobu'
> Even a simple echo 'You have an active byobu session..' would be better
> than stopping to ask me a question.

Interesting.  Sure, we can make that configurable, at the very least.
And we should absolutely discuss the most sensible default behavior.
That's absolutely a valid point, and something that should definitely
be reconsidered.

> Anyway, since this is a lucid remote box, now I have *4* lines of byobu
> hotness at the bottom. Also I hit F2 to go to the next window. OOPS,
> my ssh session disappeared because I'm only controlling the local
> byobu. I want to scroll back on the remote machine to see what I did
> 5 minutes ago. Oops, the scrollback capabilities are gone because my
> local terminal has been told its got a window now. Ctrl-A-A-ESC will
> get me into the screen backscroll/copy/paste mode, but by this time,
> honestly.. I'm very, very annoyed and just want my bash back.

You can *always* get around byobu launching by default by running:

 $ ssh -t remotehost bash

I use this frequently when ssh'ing elsewhere from within Byobu, if I
don't want a nested session.  This probably needs to be documented
better.

> Until the mechanics flow between terminals and ssh sessions in a way
> that makes sense to me, I'll find it very hard to be a +1.

Fair enough.  It's really just a matter of knowing where you are, and
how to drive.  It's second nature to me, at this point.

> Has there been any thought given to focusing on making byobu work in
> a more client/server way where a remote byobu knows it is talking to
> a byobu terminal, and so can integrate well into it (so add its status
> to the local byobu rather than adding another status line.. and letting
> f-keys be split between local / remote).
>
> THAT would make it smooth, and would probably turn me into a fan.

To be honest, no I haven't given much thought specifically about it,
though that sounds like a great topic for Oneiric byobu development.

The code that currently handles this (in case you want to toy with it
yourself) is in /usr/bin/byobu-launcher.  See the:
  case "$TERM" in     *screen*) #handle nesting ...
section of that shell script.  This is where we could do something smarter.

Thanks for the feedback, Clint!

-- 
:-Dustin

Dustin Kirkland
Ubuntu Core Developer