byobu ERROR: Sessions should be nested with care. Unset $TMUX to force

Question

I encountered the following ERROR messages:

1.

byobu
ERROR: Sessions should be nested with care. Unset $TMUX to force.

some versions will show a warning instead of an error:

WARNING: Sessions should be nested with care.

2.

byobu -ls
tmux: unknown option -- s
usage: tmux [-28lquvV] [-c shell-command] [-f file] [-L socket-name]
            [-S socket-path] [command [flags]]

May I ask what you recommend?

Answer 1

As the error suggests, nesting Byobu sessions inside of Byobu or Tmux can be complicated. If you know you want to do this, you simply need to unset the TMUX environment variable to override this protection, which you can do on one line like this:

TMUX=  byobu

To your second question, it looks like you're trying to run the GNU Screen -ls command to list sessions? If so, you're probably confusing the fact that Byobu now supports two different backends: Tmux and Screen.

The default behavior in Byobu is to use the Tmux backend. However, you can override that temporarily at any time, by calling directly the binaries byobu-tmux or byobu-screen, or you can permanently choose and configure your default backend using byobu-select-backend, and then the simple byobu command will default to that backend thereafter.

Full disclosure: I am the author and maintainer of Byobu.