byobu supports a number of unique and interesting status notifications across the lowest two lines in the
screen. Each status notification item is independently configurable, enabled and disabled by the
configuration utility. The guide below helps identify each status item (in alphabetical order):
apport - symbol displayed if there are pending crash reports; {!} symbol displayed on the lower bar
toward the left, in black on an orange background
arch - system architecture; displayed on the lower bar toward the left, in the default text color on the
default background color
battery - battery information; display on the lower bar toward the right; - indicates discharging, +
indicates charging, = indicates fully charged; when charging or discharging, the current battery
capacity as a percentage is displayed; the colours green, yellow, and red are used to give further
indication of the battery's charge state; you may override the detected battery by setting
BATTERY=/proc/acpi/battery/BAT0 in $BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/statusrccpu_count - the number of cpu's or cores on the system; displayed in the lower bar toward the right in
the default text color on the default background, followed by a trailing 'x'
cpu_freq - the current frequency of the cpu in GHz; displayed in the lower bar toward the right in white
text on a light blue background
cpu_temp - the cpu temperature in Celsius (default) or Fahrenheit, configure TEMP=F or TEMP=C in
$BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/statusrc; displayed in the lower bar toward the right in yellow text on a black
background; you may override the detected cpu temperature device by setting
MONITORED_TEMP=/proc/acpi/whatever in $BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/statusrccustom - user defined custom scripts; must be executable programs of any kind in $BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/bin;
must be named N_NAME, where N is the frequency in seconds to refresh the status indicator, and NAME is
the name of the script; N should not be less than 5 seconds; the script should echo a small amount of
text to standard out, standard error is discarded; the indicator will be displayed in the lower panel, in
default colors, unless you manually specify the colors in your script's output; BEWARE, cpu-intensive
custom scripts may impact your overall system performance and could upset your system administrator! In
fact, you can easily copy and modify any status script usually found in /usr/lib/byobu/* to your local
$HOME/.byobu/ directory.
Example: $BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/bin/1000_uname
#!/bin/sh
printf "\005{= bw}%s\005{-}" "$(uname -r)"
date - the system date in YYYY-MM-DD format, or you can set this to any valid strftime(3) you like in
$BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/datetime; displayed in the lower on the far right in the default text color on the
default background
disk - total disk space available and total used on / directory; displayed in the lower bar on the far
right in white text on a light purple background; override the default directory by specifying an
alternate mount point with MONITORED_DISK=/wherever in $BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/statusrcdisk_io - instantaneous read/write througput in kB/s or MB/s over the last 3 seconds; displayed in the
lower bar toward the right in white text on a light purple background with a leading '<' sign indicating
'read speed' and '>' sign indicating 'write speed'; override the default monitored disk by specifying an
alternate device with MONITORED_DISK=/dev/sdb, and override the default DISK_IO_THRESHOLD=50 (kB/s) in
$BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/statusrcdistro - OS/distribution name of the release running on the current system as reported by lsb_release(1)
or /etc/issue; displayed in the lower bar in bold black text toward the left on a grey background; you
may override the detected release with DISTRO=Whatever in $BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/statusrcentropy - a count of the system's current entropy in bytes; displayed in the lower bar toward the right
in yellow text on a dark grey background; there is a leading 'e' to indicate 'entropy'
raid - note very prominently if there is a RAID failure detected, in red blinking text on a white
background; the term 'RAID' notes that there is something wrong with the RAID, and if there is a
rebuild/resync in progress, the percent complete is also shown
fan_speed - cpu or system fan speed as reported by lm-sensors; displayed in the lower bar toward the
right in black text on a grey background; there is a trailing 'rpm' for units; you may override the
detected fan by setting FAN=/sys/path/to/your/fan1_input in $BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/statusrchostname - the hostname of the system; displayed in the upper bar on the far right in bold black text on
a grey background; there is a leading '@' symbol if the username status is also enabled
ip_address - the IPv4 address of the system in dotted decimal form; displayed in the upper bar on the far
right in bold black text on a grey background; you can override and display your IPv6 address by setting
'IPV6=1', and you can show your external ip address by setting 'IP_EXTERNAL=1' in
$BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/statusrcip_address4 - the IPv4 address of the system in dotted decimal form; displayed in the upper bar on the
far right in bold black text on a grey background; you can show your external ip address by setting
'IP_EXTERNAL=1' in $BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/statusrcip_address6 - the IPv6 address of the system; displayed in the upper bar on the far right in bold black
text on a grey background; you can show your external ip address by setting 'IP_EXTERNAL=1' in
$BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/statusrcload_average - the system load average over the last 1 minute; displayed in the lower bar toward the
right in black text on a yellow background
logo - an approximation of the current operating system's logo; displayed in the lower bar on the far
left; you may customize this logo by setting a chosen logo with LOGO=:-D in $BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/statusrcmail - system mail for the current user; the letter '[M]' is displayed in the lower bar toward the left
in black text on a grey background
memory - total memory available and used percentage in the system; displayed in the lower bar toward the
right in white text on a green background
menu - a simple indicator directing new users to use the F9 keybinding to access the byobu menu
network - instantaneous upload/download bandwidth in [GMk]bps over the last 3 seconds; nothing is
displayed if traffic is 0; displayed in the lower bar toward the left in white text on a purple
background with a leading '^' sign indicating 'up' and 'v' sign indicating 'down'; override the default
interface by specifying an alternate interface with MONITORED_NETWORK=eth1, and override the default
units (bits) with NETWORK_UNITS=bytes, and override the default NETWORK_THRESHOLD=20 (kbps) in
$BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/statusrcnotify_osd - Send on-screen notification messages to screen's notification buffer
packages - total number of packages installed on the system; displayed in the lower bar in yellow text on
a white background inside of square brackets, '[xxx]'
processes - total number of processes running on the system; displayed in the lower bar in white text on
a dark yellow background with a trailing '&' indicating 'background processes'
reboot_required - symbol present if a reboot is required following a system update; displayed in the
lower bar white text on a blue background by the symbol '(R)'; additionally, reboot_required will print
'<F5>' in white text on a blue background, if Byobu requires you to reload your profile to affect some
changes; it will also detect if your system is currently in powernap(8) state and if so print '.zZ'; if
your system is currently performing an unattended-upgrade(1) you will see a white warning sign on a red
background.
release - OS/distribution name of the release running on the current system as reported by lsb_release(1)
or /etc/issue; displayed in the lower bar in bold black text toward the left on a grey background; you
may override the detected release with RELEASE=Whatever in $BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/statusrc; you may also
abbreviate the release string to N characters by setting RELEASE_ABBREVIATED=N in
$BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/statusrcservices - users can configure a list of services to monitor, define the SERVICES variable in
$BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/statusrc, a whitespace separated of services, each service should include the init name
of the service, then a pipe, and then an abbreviated name or symbol to display when running (e.g.
SERVICES="ssh|ssh apache2|http"); displayed in the lower bar toward the center in cyan on a white
background
session - byobu session name (only supported in byobu-tmux(1)); displayed in the lower bar on the left in
underlined black text on a white background
swap - total swap space and total used as a percentage of the total available; displayed in the lower bar
toward the right in black text on a light green background with a trailing '%' sign
time - the system time in HH:MM:SS format (by default), or you can set this to any valid strftime(3) you
like in $BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/datetime; displayed in the lower bar on the far right in the default text and
default background colors
time_binary - only for the hard core geek, the local system time in binary; requires UTF-8 support in a
VERY recent version of GNU Screen; displayed in the lower bar on the far right in the default text and
background colors
time_utc - the UTC system time in HH:MM format; displayed in the lower bar on the far right in dark text
on a light background
updates_available - the number of updates available on the system; displayed in the lower bar toward the
right in white text on a red background with a trailing '!' sign; if any updates are marked 'security
updates', then there will be a total of two trailing exclamation points, '!!'
uptime - the total system uptime since last boot; displayed in the lower bar toward the right in blue
text on a grey background
users - the number of remote users logged into the system via sshd, empty if 0 users; displayed in the
lower bar toward the right in red text on a grey background with a trailing '#' sign; set
USERS_DISTINCT=1 to instead count the number of distinct users logged into the system (rather than open
ssh sessions)
whoami - the name of the user who owns the screen session; displayed in the upper bar toward the far
right in bold black text on a grey background
wifi_quality - the connection rate and signal quality of the wifi connection; displayed in the lower bar
toward the right in black text on a cyan background; the connection rate is in 'Mb/s' and the signal
quality is as a percentage with a trailing '%'; override the default interface by specifying an alternate
interface with MONITORED_NETWORK=wlan0 in $BYOBU_CONFIG_DIR/statusrc
Install Now
PNG Icons
