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 7, 2014 at 17:48

Michael Durrant · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-07 22:20:23Z

16

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

set -g history-limit 20000

answered Apr 7, 2014 at 22:20

Michael Durrant

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Ah ha! Yep, set is an alias for set-option. Here's a related question that I just found: stackoverflow.com/questions/18760281/…
– cpugeniusmv
Apr 7, 2014 at 22:37
yeah. set-option actually didn't work for me
– Michael Durrant
Apr 8, 2014 at 0:51
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 8, 2014 at 3:38
-g means global. That is all values of that setting in all sessions/windows/panes etc. Not just the one where the setting was applied, via, e.g. the keyboard. The regardless. The antithesis of -s (session) -p (pane) and -w (window). This also becomes the new default for a setting if no other per item setting is given.
– Jay M
Sep 20 at 15:02

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Bill Lynch · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-07 01:33:44Z

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 + :).

Bill Lynch

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answered Apr 7, 2014 at 18:08

cpugeniusmv

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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 7, 2014 at 22:19

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2 Answers 2