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Terminal Troubleshooting Notes

Problems I've encountered and solved while configuring my terminal setup (Ghostty + tmux + zsh).

Problem: Ctrl+A and Ctrl+E Not Working in Zsh​

Issue: Ctrl+A (beginning of line) and Ctrl+E (end of line) weren't working in my zsh terminal, but worked fine inside Claude Code.

Investigation Steps:

  1. Used bindkey to check current keybindings
  2. Discovered zsh was in vi-mode by default
  3. Realized vi-mode disables emacs-style keybindings

Solution: Added explicit bindings in ~/.zshrc:

bindkey -v                    # Enable vi-mode
bindkey '^A' beginning-of-line # But keep Ctrl+A
bindkey '^E' end-of-line       # And Ctrl+E

Problem: Tmux Config Not Reloading​

Issue: Changes to ~/.tmux.conf weren't taking effect without restarting tmux completely.

Solution: Added reload keybinding to ~/.tmux.conf:

bind r source-file ~/.tmux.conf \; display-message "tmux.conf reloaded!"

Now prefix + r reloads the config instantly.

Problem: Accidentally Messed Up Pane Layout​

Issue: Pressed Ctrl+Space (prefix) + Space and all my panes got reorganized into a weird layout.

Root Cause: prefix + Space is tmux's default keybinding for cycling through pane layouts.

What I Learned: This is actually a feature, not a bug. Useful layouts include:

  • Even horizontal
  • Even vertical
  • Main horizontal (one large pane on top)
  • Main vertical (one large pane on left)

Can cycle through them intentionally now when needed.

Installing Tmux Plugins​

Discovery: Can install tmux plugins managed by TPM using prefix + I (capital i).

This installs all plugins listed in the set -g @plugin lines in ~/.tmux.conf.

Debugging Commands Used​

Check zsh keybindings:

bindkey                    # Show all bindings
bindkey | grep line       # Filter for specific commands

Reload configurations:

# Zsh: source ~/.zshrc (or restart terminal)
# Tmux: prefix + r (after adding reload binding)
  • Column command is perfect for use with viewing the output of csv files. Cat command output may not be readable, but column command shows it in a good, tabular format.
column -t -s, test.csv
# -t for tabular, -s for separator, which is a comma here. See man page for more.
  • fuser command is perfect for finding the process id of open files. For instance, a video, music, image file is open in your system. Or some file can't be closed/modified, or some drive can't be unmounted, because it's being used by some other process. fuser gives you the process id of that file.
fuser ~/Downloads/**/test.png # 123
kill 123
  • mkdir command has a -p option, which makes intermediate directories that don't exist. Also, it supports creating multiple nested subdirectories separated using comma and brace expansion
mkdir -p test/{test1,test2/{test3,test4}}
eza -T test # -T stands for tree, alternatively use -L2 to specify depth order 2
test
├── test1
└── test2
    ├── test3
    └── test4