How do I increase my iterm (tmux) window scrollback (not the line scrollback)

Question

When I want to scroll back, i.e. with my mouse (or with PageUp) I can only go up about 43 pages (about 2000 lines). Can I increase that?

I have my terminal preference -> "Scrollback Lines" set to 1000000
I also have my bashrc set with

HISTSIZE=100000
HISTFILESIZE=200000

but these settings aren't helping.

You see how far in the terminal top right, i.e.

enter image description here

and 1900-2000 seems about the max at which point older content is lost.

Is that tmux? It has its own scrollback independent of your terminal emulator. — cpugeniusmv, Apr 07 '14 at 17:48

score 16 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 07 '14 at 22:20

16

Putting this in my .tmux.conf file was the trick:

set -g history-limit 20000

answered Apr 07 '14 at 22:20

Michael Durrant

Ah ha! Yep, `set` is an alias for `set-option`. Here's a related question that I just found: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18760281/how-to-increase-scrollback-buffer-size-in-tmux – cpugeniusmv Apr 07 '14 at 22:37
yeah. set-option actually didn't work for me – Michael Durrant Apr 08 '14 at 00:51
Well, the critical bit you added was `-g`. I personally am not sure why that is important, but the linked question might have more information. – cpugeniusmv Apr 08 '14 at 03:38

score 8 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 07 '16 at 01:33

8

For tmux you can alter its scrollback buffer with

set-option history-limit 10000

The default is 2000.

You can put this directive in your ~/.tmux.conf or at the tmux command prompt (prefix + :).

edited Jul 07 '16 at 01:33

Bill Lynch

answered Apr 07 '14 at 18:08

cpugeniusmv

1

+1 for a useful lead (looking in the .tmux.conf) though this didn't work as is for me. My actual answer ended up below – Michael Durrant Apr 07 '14 at 22:19

2 Answers2