it's not magical or hidden. every invocation of tmux is a call to a running tmux server. the only exception is when no server is running, in which case a new one is started.
i have tmux running all the time. started once when i connect to a server for the first time, it keeps running until the server is rebooted. i have tmux sessions that go back years.
the only time the environment is causing me trouble is when a new ssh connection is forwarding an ssh agent, which doesn't get transferred into the tmux session when i attach. but screen would not help here either. if you connect to an existing screen session it has the same problem. we really want a way to adjust the environment for specific variables on attach.
i have tmux running all the time. started once when i connect to a server for the first time, it keeps running until the server is rebooted. i have tmux sessions that go back years.
the only time the environment is causing me trouble is when a new ssh connection is forwarding an ssh agent, which doesn't get transferred into the tmux session when i attach. but screen would not help here either. if you connect to an existing screen session it has the same problem. we really want a way to adjust the environment for specific variables on attach.