Will any (recent) Linux terminal emulator allow me to save my session (tabs, history, etc)?

Question

Over time, I become invested in my terminal sessions: tabs, command history, window layout and title, etc. Eventually, a reboot requires me to start all over again which wastes my time.

The two terminal emulators with which I'm familiar had at least partial capability here, but the functionality has since been removed: konsole lost this functionality somewhere along the way to KDE4. gnome-terminal lost the --save-config option as "obsolete" somewhere before version 3.10.2, i.e. the answer here no longer applies: Save multiple gnome-terminal layout?

I want to capture the current state of all terminal sessions and restore them after a reboot. A scripted solution would be fine, so long as it does not require manual updates to track session changes.

Define "state". For example, if you are reading a file with less, do you want that same file to be remembered next time you open your terminal or do you just want the tabs/panes set up and the relevant programs launched? Would something like my answer here work for you? — terdon, May 20 '14 at 22:14
State means: windows, tabs, command history, window layout, window & tab titles. I do not need to save state for arbitrary processes running in the terminal session, e.g. "less". Even bash needs some coaxing here, since command history is not saved per instance without some tricks. I'll check your link. The closest I've found so far is Konsole bookmarks. — srking, May 20 '14 at 23:54
In that case, terminator can do it as I explain in the link I gave in my previous comment. Let me know if you need anything else and I'll tweak it accordingly and post as a new answer here. If not, I will vote to close this as a duplicate. — terdon, May 20 '14 at 23:59
@terdon, Thanks, I'm glad to know about terminator. After briefly experimenting, there are shortcomings for me: (1) does not save bash history per shell, and (2) can't rename tabs? I suspect I can't do what I want without rolling some fragile scripts. — srking, May 21 '14 at 00:49
@terdon: Yes, bash-isms are required for history save/restore, but this could work when each bash shell has its own unique HISTFILE. The terminal program could help in this regard by allowing history setup commands to run at startup. It looks like Terminator allows per-shell startup, but it's a brain and labor intensive process for novice users. A canned solution guided via a GUI would be ideal. — srking, May 21 '14 at 16:23
Ah, yeah, I see what you mean. You'd have to export HISTFILE='foo' for each tab. Sorry, no idea about a GUI way, I've never needed to do this. If you don't get any useful answers here after a while, flag for mod attention and ask them to migrate to [unix.se]. You might have better luck there. Make sure you include the clarifications you've given in the comments about what exactly you need. — terdon, May 21 '14 at 16:29
I've been looking for exactly this for ages. I have exactly the same problem as the OP - I have 20-30 tabs up for months, then I have to reboot and I don't want to waste all the tabs individual history, path prompts etc. But I guess this is what open-source is about, we can take Terminator and add the per-tab HISTFILE stuff :) — BjornW, Sep 21 '14 at 12:26

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 24 '14 at 04:43

2

this isn't exactly what you asked for but tmux has such capabilities.

Just make sure to install the tmux-resurrect plugin along with it, which allows for restoring the tmux environment (windows, splits, and certain running programs) after a restart.

On the bright side, tmux will work with all

edited Nov 24 '14 at 04:43

glallen

2,204

answered Sep 27 '14 at 03:32

sgp667

731

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 06 '18 at 02:40

1

Here is an xfce terminal fork, with possibility to save/restore session just from menu: https://github.com/repu1sion/xfce4-terminal

answered Apr 06 '18 at 02:40

pulse

111
1

I'm using the most recent xfce4-terminal 0.8.10-1 from Arch Linux, and these menus are missing. The link you gave is pretty strange: why doesn't it have any releases? – Yaroslav Nikitenko Jan 07 '21 at 14:43

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 27 '21 at 07:27

1

https://github.com/Eugeny/terminus saves open tabs & remembers the correct directory for each

answered Feb 27 '21 at 07:27

Marius

111

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 23 '21 at 08:48

The excellent Guake Terminal allows you to do this, there is an option to remember your set of tabs between restarts.

It's currently listed as an 'experimental' feature in the settings, but after using this feature for a few months, I've never had a problem.

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 22 '23 at 08:16

Now with vscode extension Terminal Keeper you can customize your saved terminal sessions with json config like

 "default": [
            [
                {
                    "name": "docker:ros",
                    "commands": [
                        "ssh r99"
                    ],
                    "autoExecuteCommands": true
                },
                {
                    "name": "docker:k8s",
                    "commands": [
                        ""
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "name": "docker:nats",
                    "commands": [
                        ""
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "name": "docker:fleet",
                    "commands": [
                        ""
                    ]
                }
            ],
            [
                {
                    "name": "db:postgre",
                    "commands": [
                        ""
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "name": "db:redis",
                    "commands": [
                        ""
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "name": "db:hyper",
                    "commands": [
                        ""
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "name": "db:mysql",
                    "commands": [
                        ""
                    ]
                }
            ],
            [
                {
                    "name": "api:delivery",
                    "commands": [
                        ""
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "name": "api:feedback",
                    "commands": [
                        ""
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "name": "api:service",
                    "commands": [
                        ""
                    ]
                }
            ],
            {
                "name": "test",
                "commands": [
                    ""
                ]
            },
            {
                "name": "debug",
                "commands": [
                    ""
                ]
            }
        ],

pretty easily.

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 29 '14 at 13:26

I guess that this is not really an answer to your question, but this is how I had it set up:

A bunch of scripts which would open different "Gnome-Terminal presets".

For example, in this script, I open gnome-terminal with three tabs, and call SSH with parameters in each one.

#!/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/bin:/bin 

gnome-terminal \
--tab -t CustomTabText1 -e 'sh -c "ssh hostname.one"' \
--tab -t CustomTabText2 -e 'sh -c "ssh hostname.two"' \
--tab -t CustomTabText3 -e 'sh -c "ssh hostname.three"'

I also used ssh config file heavily to reflect specific host SSH parameters. Of course, if you need an exception, just pass the parameters to SSH in the gnome-terminal script, which will take precedence over the SSH config file.

For running simple commands such as "ssh machine" you do not need running a shell (sh -c).
It is needed to perform redirections and pipelining, wildcard expansion, conditionals etc. but not for running plain commands. — Raúl Salinas-Monteagudo, Nov 06 '14 at 10:22

Will any (recent) Linux terminal emulator allow me to save my session (tabs, history, etc)?

6 Answers6