# Help, tpm not working!
Here's the list of issues users had with `tpm`:
> Nothing works. `tpm` key bindings `prefix + I`, `prefix + U` not even
defined.
Related [issue #22](https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm/issues/22)
- Do you have required `tmux` version to run `tpm`?
Check `tmux` version with `$ tmux -V` command and make sure it's higher or
equal to the required version for `tpm` as stated in the readme.
- ZSH tmux plugin might be causing issues.
If you have it installed, try disabling it and see if `tpm` works then.
- Are you using `tmux` as a top level shell?
If `tmux` is the top level shell (not started from another shell) then the
environment during initialisation could be very minimal. For example, if your
`tmux` binary is under `/usr/local/bin` (as it is in macOS when installed with
Homebrew) then `tpm` will not find it since `/usr/local/bin` might not be in
the `$PATH`. A workaround would be to extend the `$PATH` manually in
`.tmux.conf` before loading `tpm`:
set-environment -g "PATH" "/usr/local/bin:$PATH"
> Help, I'm using custom config file with `tmux -f /path/to/my_tmux.conf`
to start Tmux and for some reason plugins aren't loaded!?
Related [issue #57](https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm/issues/57)
`tpm` has a known issue when using custom config file with `-f` option.
The solution is to use alternative plugin definition syntax. Here are the steps
to make it work:
1. remove all `set -g @plugin` lines from tmux config file
2. in the config file define the plugins in the following way:
# List of plugins
set -g @tpm_plugins ' \
tmux-plugins/tpm \
tmux-plugins/tmux-sensible \
tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect \
'
# Initialize TMUX plugin manager (keep this line at the very bottom of tmux.conf)
run '~/.tmux/plugins/tpm/tpm'
3. Reload TMUX environment so TPM is sourced: `$ tmux source /path/to/my_tmux.conf`
The plugins should now be working.
> Weird sequence of characters show up when installing or updating plugins
Related: [issue #25](https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm/issues/25)
- This could be caused by [tmuxline.vim](https://github.com/edkolev/tmuxline.vim)
plugin. Uninstall it and see if things work.
> "failed to connect to server" error when sourcing .tmux.conf
Related: [issue #48](https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm/issues/48)
- Make sure `tmux source ~/.tmux.conf` command is ran from inside `tmux`.
> tpm not working: '~/.tmux/plugins/tpm/tpm' returned 2 (Windows / Cygwin)
Related: [issue #81](https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm/issues/81)
This issue is most likely caused by Windows line endings. For example, if you
have git's `core.autocrlf` option set to `true`, git will automatically convert
all the files to Windows line endings which might cause a problem.
The solution is to convert all line ending to Unix newline characters. This
command handles that for all files under `.tmux/` dir (skips `.git`
subdirectories):
```bash
find ~/.tmux -type d -name '.git*' -prune -o -type f -print0 | xargs -0 dos2unix
```