Questions tagged [history]

The history command can be used to manage commands you have previously typed in a shell.

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384 votes
9 answers
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How to see time stamps in bash history?

Is there any way I can see at what time the commands were executed from the bash history? We can see the order but is there any way I can get the time also? Bottom-Line: Execution time in the Bash ...
Raja G's user avatar
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370 votes
9 answers
915k views

How to clear bash history completely?

I want to clear all previous commands from the history of my server. I used history -c and it seems all things are cleared but when I ssh to the server, all the commands are still there. How can I ...
hd.'s user avatar
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241 votes
10 answers
28k views

Terminal 'incognito mode'?

I use Terminal a lot, and sometimes I am running commands, which aren't things I don't want others to see, but more commands that if I accidentally arrowed up to and accidentally executed would cause ...
user avatar
229 votes
7 answers
149k views

Bash history search, partial + up-arrow

I have searched, but not found anything on this. I am looking for a functionality in bash, using a terminal. Way back when, I had a user on a debian system, and a friend set me up with a convenient ...
TLP's user avatar
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203 votes
4 answers
95k views

Is it possible to make writing to .bash_history immediate?

I often open lots and lots of terminals (right now, I have seven open on this workspace) and I often search history with grep to find a command I've just written recently, but I don't want to hunt ...
Matt's user avatar
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158 votes
7 answers
130k views

Bash history handling with multiple terminals

I use mainly Terminator, and it's usually opened with 3 split terminal windows. I also use Gnome terminal for various reasons. I'm wondering how is bash history handled in this case as I sometimes ...
zetah's user avatar
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156 votes
5 answers
735k views

View history of commands run in terminal

Is there a way to save all my typed terminal commands and view it like history in a log book?
rgr's user avatar
  • 1,909
156 votes
6 answers
81k views

How to avoid duplicate entries in .bash_history

The same command is listed in my history again and again. How can I avoid this? I know it's possible via HISTCONTROL but I haven't found the right way.
karthick87's user avatar
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146 votes
6 answers
172k views

How do I show apt-get package management history via command line?

Is there a way to show the history of packages that were changed by apt-get via command line?
NES's user avatar
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88 votes
8 answers
143k views

Is there a default clipboard history in Ubuntu? If there is, how can I access it?

Is there a default clipboard history in Ubuntu 20.04 or later? If there is, how can I access it? I know there are lots of available applications for saving clipboard history in the default Ubuntu ...
Cherwen Molina's user avatar
85 votes
4 answers
359k views

How to view the `.bash_history` file via command line?

I want to view the contents of my .bash_history file but don't know how to get there via the command line.
isupportopensource's user avatar
60 votes
3 answers
116k views

How to save terminal history manually?

It's my understanding that the history file is updated when the terminal exits. But sometimes my computer crashes out, and the terminal doesn't exit cleanly, and then I lose those commands from my ...
wim's user avatar
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58 votes
2 answers
225k views

Save the terminal history to a file for print

My Ubuntu headless server is about to lose both hard drives(raid1). I already saved the most important stuff. Now I'm sitting in front of a Mac OS X client with the terminal open (ssh). I need to ...
cocco's user avatar
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56 votes
2 answers
41k views

How do you share history between terminals in zsh?

How can it be achieved so that every command that is entered, is visible in every open terminal's history? When having multiple terminals open, the history isn't shared, i.e. what you entered in one ...
MJB's user avatar
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49 votes
2 answers
57k views

Bash history not saved after closing terminal

I recently replaced my Ubuntu 14.04 installation with Ubuntu Gnome (which comes with Gnome DE). But I noticed that bash history is not saved once the terminal session is closed. Once I close a ...
Deepal's user avatar
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39 votes
5 answers
48k views

Select commands from bash history

Pressing the up button is tedious and I might miss the command I was looking for. So when typing history at the terminal gives me all the commands I have entered before, indexed to a number. Is there ...
user182936's user avatar
29 votes
8 answers
41k views

How to view history of apt-get install?

How can I view the history of apt-get install commands that I have manually executed? It seems to me that all methods available show everything that has been installed right from the start of the ...
TellMeWhy's user avatar
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27 votes
5 answers
99k views

bash shell output history file location

Where does the bash shell store the actual terminal session? I want to read the output of commands I used before. All I can find googling is how to store the output of a command. Since output is ...
Daniel Böckenhoff's user avatar
25 votes
4 answers
88k views

How to find history of shell commands since machine was created?

I created an Ubuntu virtualbox machine a couple weeks ago and have been working on projects off and on in it since then. Now I would like to find the syntax of some commands I typed in the terminal ...
Edward Tanguay's user avatar
21 votes
4 answers
97k views

Where are ALL ubuntu logs/terminal history stored

In what folders are the logs and key histories stored so that I may make a script to purge them. Is there a specific folder for the hibernation partition or a file by which it keeps the RAM data on ...
The Umbraic Light's user avatar
20 votes
3 answers
22k views

bash doesn't keep history

I run Ubuntu 12.04, and for some reason bash does not keep my command history. the ~/.bash_history file contains only 3 commands that I typed a few months ago. How can I fix this? EDIT: here's the ...
yohbs's user avatar
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20 votes
4 answers
6k views

How to get shared Bash history among different tabs

I used the answer in https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/1292/41729 to enable real-time shared history among separate Bash terminals. As explained in the answer above, this is achieved by adding the ...
lucacerone's user avatar
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19 votes
3 answers
66k views

Finding an old command in the shell history [duplicate]

How can I find an old command I ran in my terminal? I used an appengine command and wish to just find it in my local command history without researching it online again.
saviour123's user avatar
17 votes
1 answer
13k views

How can I view history in terminal for specific date?

How can I view the terminal history for a specific date? For example today is 4-apr and I want to view the history of 31-mar
kulwinder1986's user avatar
16 votes
4 answers
42k views

Bash command history not working

The command history between sessions is not getting saved. I'm using guake and the history for the session is working fine. I noticed that .bash_history had some commands I executed in sudo -s mode ...
user avatar
15 votes
4 answers
893 views

Run last command with all the letters transformed to lowercase

Many times I have run a command with all the letters in uppercase (maybe because CapsLock was on), and I pressed Enter before realising this. How can I run the last command with all the letters ...
Radu Rădeanu's user avatar
15 votes
3 answers
4k views

How can I make a list with most used commands in terminal?

How can I make a list with most used commands in terminal? I know that this question may be unuseful for any future proposals for some of us, but even like this, the list can be useful when we don't ...
Radu Rădeanu's user avatar
14 votes
1 answer
3k views

multiline command chunks in bash history into multiple lines

In Bash (as well as Bash in WSL), multiline written commands can call-back with up/down arrows correctly also built-in history command report them correctly (until I'm still logged-in in bash). But ...
αғsнιη's user avatar
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12 votes
8 answers
1k views

Ubuntu Philosophy Question [closed]

I was just switching from Windows to Ubuntu and I started to read this. And there were quite a few things I did not understand. One was: "OpenOffice decided not to have a learning curve" Another ...
The-Ever-Kid's user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
568 views

Terminal replacing ! followed by a number with a command

I'm very confused about my ubuntu terminal session, it seems to replace sections in commands that start by ! followed by a number with seemingly random commands. It does that with !87 replacing it ...
usbpc102's user avatar
  • 263
11 votes
2 answers
53k views

How do I SSH and remove all previous SSH activity history?

I want to remove any and all activity logs for SSH remotely. How do I get to it? My account on the remote server doesn't have admin privilege, and as such I just want to remove user to user ...
Oxwivi's user avatar
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11 votes
2 answers
2k views

Get bash history to remember only the commands run with space prefixed!

The commands executed in the terminal prefixed with blank space(s) are not recorded in the command history file. But is there a way to get the reverse i.e. the history should only record those which ...
rusty's user avatar
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10 votes
1 answer
2k views

Is there any way to check history only of current session?

I wanted to know if there is any command or any other way I can check my command history only in the current session.
Andrew's user avatar
  • 327
10 votes
0 answers
8k views

missing .bash_history [closed]

I cant find .bash_history file in my home directory. I do: echo $HISTFILE /home/myname/.bash_history But if I try to list the file with ls, I get: $ ls -l ~/.bash_history ls: cannot access /home/...
vico's user avatar
  • 4,527
9 votes
1 answer
7k views

What's the difference between "history -w" and the action of closing a shell session?

I did some tests about history: I ran history-c and then logged out. This cleared history for the current shell. I ran history -c && history -w. This deleted everything. I deleted the entire ...
Sinoosh's user avatar
  • 2,031
9 votes
6 answers
10k views

History list without timestamp and unique the results

Using bash, I save my history with the timestamp. How do print the history omitting the timestamp? alias h=history alias g=grep -i To find lines that I used for heroku, I type: > h | g heroku ...
justingordon's user avatar
8 votes
5 answers
4k views

How can I recall a command from history by number without executing it?

How can I grab a command from history by number to my command line without executing it? This immediately executes command number 555 which I'm not looking for: $ history 10 $ !555 This opens the ...
Kevin Berry's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
6k views

How to see time in ~/.bash_history file

I added time to the ~/.bashrc file, so now it shows me time when I execute history command like this: 376 04/10/19 20:39:52 sudo cat ~/.bash_history 377 04/10/19 20:40:04 date 378 07/10/19 ...
Prototype's user avatar
  • 129
8 votes
1 answer
5k views

Increase or View all Stored History in Gedit

I would like to be able to see the last ~200 files opened in Gedit. I was able to increase the number it shows to 40 using this command: gconftool-2 --type int --set /apps/gedit-2/preferences/ui/...
Andy Groff's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
10k views

How to save terminal history to a file from a bash file?

I am trying to create a bash script that will save the terminal history to a file called hist.txt. Using history > hist.txt doesn't seem to work in the bash script, but works fine when executed in ...
Judy's user avatar
  • 71
7 votes
5 answers
2k views

Searchable Clipboard Manager, like ctrl-r in bash

I am looking for a clipboard manager with search functionality. I love CtrlR in the bash shell and would like to have the same functionality like that in clipboard manager for my desktop. Up to now I ...
guettli's user avatar
  • 1,727
7 votes
3 answers
14k views

History command showing the directory and the date

Is there a way to have in the .bash_history file, listed: the directory where the command has been typed, the date, and the command ?
Apahidean Iancu's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
154 views

Using last part of command for next command

When using the command I know a friend of mine who used to re-use last part of previous command. He unfortunately moved far away and I can't get hold of him. First: cp -r folder ~/folder Then he ...
Asken's user avatar
  • 543
7 votes
0 answers
816 views

How can I increase the viewing history (recent documents) in Okular?

I tried looking for an entry/number in ~/.kde/share/config/okularrc but there was nothing to edit there as to allow me to increase the number of saved addresses
user182936's user avatar
6 votes
5 answers
5k views

How do I make Bash history undeleteable?

The Bash history can get deleted just by deleting the file which contains. How can I protect the history from being cleared / deleted?
Tomas's user avatar
  • 1,217
6 votes
4 answers
4k views

Gedit 3.6.1, how to increase the number of recent files from its default of 5?

Ubuntu 12.10, gedit 3.6.1 This won't work: gconftool-2 --type int --set /apps/gedit- /preferences/ui/recents/max_recents 30 Modifying this file as root won't work either: cat /usr/share/glib-2.0/...
Aquarius Power's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
6k views

Command history seems to be missing the first 75 lines

A couple of years ago, I did the automatic distribution update from 14.04 to 16.04. For the first time in my life, I was able to continue to use the computer after the automatic distribution update. ...
el_gallo_azul's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
17k views

Install history command package

I have Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS running on a proxmox OpenVZ container. I imagine it does not come with history because the up arrow on the command line gives me ^[[A plus... $ history -sh: history: not ...
capdragon's user avatar
  • 1,027
6 votes
2 answers
1k views

reverse-i-search of history not finding expected commands

Today upon bringing up a bash terminal I tried finding a frequently-used command from my bash history via Ctrl-r. To my surprise, it wasn't found. Upon inspecting ~/.bash_history, I saw instances of ...
BipedalShark's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
2k views

How do I disable the command line history in the dash?

Using Unity, how to clear and disable the RUN (ALT+F2) history? Not the dash history, not the search history --- the ALT+F2 "run" history. The Privacy Settings Applet of System Settings doesn't seem ...
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