Midnight Commander

mc or Midnight Commander is a powerful file manager working in a shell terminal.

Links

• Cool review of mc in action
• The GNOME Commander, a X alternative of mc under Gnome
• Krusader, a X alternative of mc under KDE

Color schemes

• Midnight Commander Solarized

VirtualFS

• Shell filesystem: /#sh:[user@]machine[:options]/[remote_dir]

Configuration

• To use vi as standard editor/viewer

First menu Options → Configuration... → uncheck use internal edIt and Use internal view.

Next, at the end of file .mc/bindings:

default/*
    Open=
    View=view %f
    Edit=%var{EDITOR:vi} %f

• Edit /etc/mc/mc.keymap* to use C-n for Auto-Complete (instead of Alt-Tab that does not work in graphical environment) (see below)
• Check complete: show all (so that selection box is shown on first ambiguity)
• To have common history between mc sub-shell and parent shell: [1]:

alias mc='PROMPT_COMMAND="history -a; history -r" mc; history -r'

• Add the following to ~/.bash_profile and ~/.profile to Meta-key (Alt) not working and Midnight Commander displays Press any key... after each command when in tmux session [2]:

# This fix meta-key support and stop mc displaying "Press any key..." in tmux session
if [ $TERM = "screen" ]; then
    export TERM=xterm
fi
if [ -n "$TMUX" ]; then
    export COLORTERM=rxvt
fi

Note: A better fix might be to do mc -x instead to force xterm mode. See ticket 2479 and ticket 2978 for more information.

Obsolete configuration (for old version):

• mc will only save the option ini file if there is a directory ~/.mc in home directory:

mkdir ~/.mc

Keyboard shortcuts

Frequently used keyboard shortcuts (custom shortcuts defined with Learn Keys... are underlined):

General: C-k C-l F10 C-o C-xd C-r C-o M-* A-? C-xq C-xc C-xo C-xs Down Up Exit Midnight Commander open sub-shell (at current directory) Compare directories Rescan (refresh panel contents) Hide panels Reverse selection Find file Quick view / Quit quick view Change file and directory rights - chmod Change file and directory owner - chown Make symlink Shell Command Line A-Enter C-S-Enter M-Tab or C-n C-x t C-x C-t C-x p C-x C-p A-p A-n A-h Paste current selection Paste fullpath current selection Auto-complete Paste tagged files Paste tagged files (other panel) Paste current path Paste current path (other panel) Previous command in history Next command in history Command history

Directory panels Tab Ins or C-t A-g A-r A-j C-s A-s A-t C-\ C-x h + \ A-o A-i A-y A-u A-S-h PgDn or C-v PgUp or A-v Home or A-< End or A-> C-PgUp C-PgDn Panel switch Tag/untag Select top file Select middle file Select bottom file Filename search Toggle current display listing Show directory hotlist Quick add to directory hostlist Group select Group unselect Load directory/parent directory in other panel Duplicate current panel Previous directory in history Next directory in history View history PgDn PgUp Home End Cd .. Cd current selection

Some work-arounds / advices:

• Gnome-Terminal conflict — Gnome Terminal shortcuts conflict with MC. Disable them in Keyboard shortcuts menu (Terminal menu shortcut key (F10) and Menu Access Keys (A-h).
• Auto-Complete does not work — The auto-complete shortcut M-Tab (i.e. Alt-Tab) doesn't work in graphical environment because it is used for switching between windows. As a replacement, one can use Esc-Tab, or can define a new shortcut like C-n (as in Vim).
  Old version — This can be done with Options... → Learn Keys...
  Newer version — The learn keys trick does not work anymore. Remove the learn key line from ~/.mc/ini and instead edit all files /etc/mc/mc.keymap* as follows:

For mc version 4.7:

PanelMoveDown = down
...
InputComplete = alt-tab; ctrl-n
...
TreeMoveDown = down

For mc version 4.8 and above:

[panel]
...
MoveDown = down
...
[input]
...
Complete = alt-tab; ctrl-n
...

or via command-line:

sudo sed -ri 's/; ctrl-n//' /etc/mc/mc*.keymap
sudo sed -ri 's/Complete.*/Complete = alt-tab; ctrl-n' /etc/mc/mc*.keymap

• Lynx motion — This is a nice option to enable in the configuration menu. When enabled, enter a directory with right and exit a directory with left.

Official repository

Besides Ubuntu repository, the official one is here. To add it:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys F82FBD49

Add file /etc/apt/sources.list.d:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/zyv/ppa/ubuntu lucid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/zyv/ppa/ubuntu lucid main

Then upgrade if needed:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Troubleshoot

MC shows "press any key to continue..." when TERM=gnome-256color

Setting TERM is necessary to fix issues in Neovim.

• Workaround: start mc with mc -x to force xterm mode:

# MC - Force xterm mode if TERM=gnome-256color
[ "$TERM" = "gnome-256color" ] && alias mc='mc -x'

• Update: we don't change TERM anymore, so this fix is no longer necessary.

Ctrl-Shift-Enter not working in Wayland

This happens in latest Debian (Buster), and is due to Wayland security model [3].

As a fix, we can use Alt-M instead [4]:

sudo sed -ri '/PutCurrentFullSelected/s/=( alt-m;)?/= alt-m;/' /etc/mc/mc.default.keymap
sudo sed -ri '/Mail = alt-m/s/= alt-m/=/;' /etc/mc/mc.default.keymap

Ctrl-Shift-E not working

In recent Gnome, Ctrl-Shift-E is now assigned to emoji input.

To remove [5]:

• Start ibus-setup
• Go to Emoji, click ... for emoji, then delete.