Configuring Miscellany | Configuring 4Pane | The Context Menu

## Exporting a Configuration

Most people won't want to do this! 4Pane creates and uses a configuration file, ~/.4Pane, which is specific to your software and hardware; not to mention any personal choices that you've made.
However there are three reasons that I can think of to want some or all of this configuration to be passed to other machines.

1. If you happen to have two or more identical setups. In that case you'd configure one box, then just copy ~/.4Pane to the others.
2. If you have the same software running on several machines with different hardware.
3. If you're a packager for a distro, creating a 4Pane package :D. You might want to specify e.g. default editors or file associations that are appropriate for that distro.

In the second two cases you'd want to copy just some of the configuration. This can be done from the dialog that you get when you click the "Export Configuration File" button in Options > Configure 4Pane > Misc > Other. You can choose to export data about any or all of:

- User-defined Tools
- Editors
- Device-mounting
- Terminals
- File Associations

The selected parts of your current configuration will be saved in your home directory, as file called 4Pane.conf.
When 4Pane starts, it looks for its configuration file. If it can't find one, the setup wizard opens. This normally creates a configuration file containing data that is, as far as possible, appropriate for your machine and distro. However it first looks for a file called either 4Pane.conf or 4pane.conf; looking first in $HOME, then in the current working directory, and finally in /etc/4Pane/ and /etc/4pane/. If one of these exists, any saved data is used instead of the wizard's guesses.
So to copy your preferences to a different machine, export them as above, and transfer 4Pane.conf to the other machines' $HOME. To use 4Pane.conf in a packaging situation, arrange for it to be installed in one of those places, presumably /etc/4[Pp]ane/.