remax

remax

Maximize serial terminal based on current window size

The remax command will reconfigure a serial terminal to use the full height and width of the containing window. It does not resize your window — it just modifies the terminal mode settings so that applications (vim, less, etc.) can utilize all available space.

Distributed as a statically-linked ELF executable with no dependencies (X11, Python, or even Go). It is also very fast.

Installation

Either use the Go package manager if you have Go installed:

go get -v github.com/ardnew/remax

Or download one of the pre-compiled executables:

Usage

Run without arguments to maximize the terminal size for the current window and print its new dimensions.

See flag -h for other options:

Usage of remax:
  -changelog
        display change history
  -p    print terminal size without changing it
  -q    suppress all non-error output
  -t duration
        read timeout in response to ANSI sequence (default 2s)
  -version
        display version information

Purpose

Often when logged into a Linux system via serial UART, user applications fail to recognize the available area of the client terminal window. In particular, if stty size reports incorrect dimensions, you can expect some applications to misbehave.

Since it is compiled as a static executable, no dependencies — X11, Python, or even Go (after building, of course) — are required. And being a true executable, it runs much faster than an interpreted script implementation. This makes it convenient for embedded Linux with minimal resources, just copy the executable to your target. See Cross-Compiling for more info.

Cross-Compiling

GNU Make

A Makefile is provided that compiles and packages a tarball for all supported platforms using the default all target (i.e. just run make without arguments).

Manual

If you want to build the utility yourself for a barebones embedded target without installing a full Go distribution, you will need to cross-compile for that target.

For example, to build for a Raspberry Pi 3/4 running Raspbian (32-bit ARM) from another host (where Go is installed):

git clone https://github.com/ardnew/remax.git $GOPATH/src/github.com/ardnew/remax
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/ardnew/remax
GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm go install
# or: go build && cp remax /usr/local/bin

Credits

Details of approach and inspiration for this utility comes from Akkana Peck (@akkana, thanks!)

• http://shallowsky.com/blog/hardware/serial-24-line-terminals.html