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

VirtualFS

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

Configuration

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

mkdir ~/.mc

• 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)

Keyboard shortcuts

• Gnome-Terminal — To solve the conflicts with Gnome Terminal, disable the Terminal menu shortcut key (to enable F10) and Menu Access Keys (to enable A-h...) in Gnome-Terminal.
• Auto-Complete — The usual shortcut for auto-complete 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 seem to work anymore. Remove the learn key line from ~/.mc/ini and instead edit all files /etc/mc/mc.keymap* as follows:

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

• 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.

• 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

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