Byobu doesn't show the colourful status line

Question

I just followed this How to get byobu to launch tmux instead of screen? and updated byobu on my Ubuntu 11.04 64bit notebook.

When I was using the old version from Ubuntu repos, there always was this colorful status line. With the new version, I no longer see it. I selected tmux as the backend, but the result looks like a bare-bone screen.

Furthermore, F9 shows only 4 options:

• Help
• Toggle status notifications
• Change escape sequence
• Byobu currently does not launch at login (toggle on)

BTW, here is what I have in my $HOME/.byobu:

zperry@nb1:~/.byobu$ ls -l
total 32
-rw-r--r-- 1 zperry zperry   19 2012-05-27 23:06 backend
lrwxrwxrwx 1 zperry zperry   33 2012-05-28 00:08 byobu ->   /home/zperry/.local/share/byobu
-rw-r--r-- 1 zperry zperry   38 2012-05-27 23:43 color
-rw-r--r-- 1 zperry zperry    0 2012-05-27 22:59 disable-autolaunch
-rw-r--r-- 1 zperry zperry   43 2012-05-27 23:43 keybindings
-rw-r--r-- 1 zperry zperry   58 2012-05-27 23:05 keybindings.tmux
-rw-r--r-- 1 zperry zperry   40 2012-05-27 23:43 profile
-rw-r--r-- 1 zperry zperry   43 2012-05-27 23:43 profile.tmux
-rw-r--r-- 1 zperry zperry    0 2012-05-27 23:39 reload-required
-rw-r--r-- 1 zperry zperry 1802 2012-05-28 00:08 status
-rw-r--r-- 1 zperry zperry    0 2012-05-27 23:22 status.disable
-rw-r--r-- 1 zperry zperry 1368 2012-05-27 23:43 statusrc
-rw-r--r-- 1 zperry zperry    0 2012-05-27 23:43 windows

Any hints as to how I can recover the colourful status line, and these missing options?

Solution 1

In you case, you have explicitly disabled your status line, as you can tell by the flag file status.disable. You can either remove this file or run byobu-quiet --undo.

It looks like you figured this out and answered your own question in the comment. As to your new question in your comment, we have disabled a few of the infrequently used and hard to maintain menu options, which includes the background/foreground color setting.

To set the foreground/background colors, you have two options now:

• Press ctrl-shift-F5 to set it to a random 256-color combination
• Or manually edit $HOME/.byobu/color.tmux

Full disclosure: I'm the author and maintainer of Byobu.

Solution 2

If you resize the terminal real small and the status line info doesn't fit, the status line disappears. Resize the terminal larger again and the status comes back! It's a feature disguised as a bug ;-)

Solution 3

I had the same issue, and the problem was solved by removing the screen hardstatus and caption (comment out those lines in ~/.screenrc). Byobu will then put its own hardstatus in their place.

Comments

[Zack Perry]

I became curious about this zero-sized file status.disable, so I mv-ed it to no.status.disable and got back the colourful status line. Nevertheless, I still don't see a way to recover these missing F9 options, such as setting background/foreground colors.

[Zack Perry]

The byobu-quiet --undo did remove the status.disable file, but tmus chipped in and generated some warnings: tmux: unknown option -- X usage: tmux [-28lquvV] [-c shell-command] [-f file] [-L socket-name] [-S socket-path] [command [flags]]

[Zack Perry]

The byobu-quiet --undo did remove the status.disable file, but at the same time I got: tmux: unknown option -- X usage: tmux [-28lquvV] [-c shell-command] [-f file] [-L socket-name] [-S socket-path] [command [flags]]

[Zack Perry]

Furthermore, I noticed two new issues: with Ubuntu 11.04, neither byobu-tmux nor byobu-screen has the Ubuntu (distribution name) properly displayed on the status bar. With 11.10, byobu-tmux doesn't show anything, almost like what you would get after running byobu-silent!

[Zack Perry]

Forgot to mention: I first tested byobu's behaviour on Ubuntu 11.10 over a ssh connection. When I went to the machine's console, after a few trials, I got the status bar with byobu-tmux. But once I went back to ssh access, again everything disappeared. byobu-screen however worked fine either direcly or over a ssh connection. I would be happy to provide screen shots if there is a way to attach such pictures.

[WinEunuuchs2Unix]

This does not provide an answer to the question. To critique or request clarification from an author, leave a comment below their post. - From Review

[PJ Brunet]

@WinEunuuchs2Unix Yes it does, think about it. I had the same problem, landed here, the above solutions did not work for me because my terminal window was too small. The Q&A here is for everyone with the same problem, not only the author's exact circumstances.