One of the most useful applications for any system administrator is screen. It allows the execution of multiple shells in one terminal. To make some of the advanced screen features more user friendly, and provide some useful information about the system, the byobu package was created.

When executing byobu pressing the F9 key will bring up the Configuration menu. This menu will allow you to:

The key bindings determine such things as the escape sequence, new window, change window, etc. There are two key binding sets to choose from f-keys and screen-escape-keys. If you wish to use the original key bindings choose the none set.

byobu provides a menu which displays the Ubuntu release, processor information, memory information, and the time and date. The effect is similar to a desktop menu.

Using the "Byobu currently does not launch at login (toggle on)" option will cause byobu to be executed any time a terminal is opened. Changes made to byobu are on a per user basis, and will not affect other users on the system.

One difference when using byobu is the scrollback mode. Press the F7 key to enter scrollback mode. Scrollback mode allows you to navigate past output using vi like commands. Here is a quick list of movement commands: