How do I increase scrollback buffer size in tmux?
If I enter copy mode, the number of available scrollback lines (visible in upper right corner) is always below 2000. I tried to find a list of all tmux commands, but I can't find anything about scrollback size. For all I see the screen command for setting that option doesn't work with tmux.
Using tmux 1.8, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, either konsole or gnome-terminal.
Open tmux configuration file with the following command:
vim ~/.tmux.conf
In the configuration file add the following line:
set -g history-limit 5000
Log out and log in again, start a new tmux windows and your limit is 5000 now.
This builds on ntc2 and Chris Johnsen's answer. I am using this whenever I want to create a new session with a custom history-limit. I wanted a way to create sessions with limited scrollback without permanently changing my history-limit for future sessions.
tmux set-option -g history-limit 100 \; new-session -s mysessionname \; set-option -g history-limit 2000
This works whether or not there are existing sessions. After setting history-limit for the new session it resets it back to the default which for me is 2000.
I created an executable bash script that makes this a little more useful. The 1st parameter passed to the script sets the history-limit for the new session and the 2nd parameter sets its session name:
#!/bin/bash
tmux set-option -g history-limit "${1}" \; new-session -s "${2}" \; set-option -g history-limit 2000
Source: Stackoverflow.com