On Sat, Jul 27, 2024 at 22:50:17 +0100, mick.crane wrote:

In debian bookworm, xfce desktop, different virtual terminals have a different history if same user presses "up key" in different virtual terminals ?

As your subject says, this is "bash history". And yes, each instance of
bash has its own separate history. It has nothing to do with your
terminal emulator or your desktop environment.

Bash reads its history from a file (~/.bash_history by default) at
startup time, manages it in memory while running, and writes it back
out to the history file upon exiting.

Is this something that can be changed so history is shared between virtual terminals?

No.

I consider this a *good* thing, personally. I used commerical Unix with
ksh for a very long time, and ksh shares history between instances in
real time. This is a *nightmare*. I really, really disliked it.

In the worst case scenario, you and a coworker might both be logged in
as root (where root's shell is ksh) simultaneously. Your histories
would then intermix in real time. You might press ESC k ENTER in your terminal, expecting to re-run the command you had just executed a
moment ago, and unexpectedly run your coworker's command.

Even in a "normal" scenario where I'm logged in as myself, and nobody
else has my password, I would not want all of my terminal windows to have
a shared history. Each of them is doing something different. I want
each terminal's workflow to be isolated to that terminal and what I'm
doing in it. I don't want them contaminating each other.

Of course, that's my opinion, and if you want a shared history across concurrent shell instances, there are probably shells that can do that.
I've never looked for it, because having lived with it, I already know
I don't want it again.

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Hi,

On Sat, Jul 27, 2024 at 10:50:17PM +0100, mick.crane wrote:

Is this something that can be changed so history is shared between virtual terminals?

You may be interested in "atuin" to aggregate shell history from
multiple logins and machines in a searchable interface. It can be
self-hosted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89zPvQF3tas

Thanks,
Andy

--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

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On Sat, Jul 27, 2024 at 23:44:08 +0100, mick.crane wrote:

On 2024-07-27 23:08, Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Sat, Jul 27, 2024 at 22:50:17 +0100, mick.crane wrote:

In debian bookworm, xfce desktop, different virtual terminals have a different history if same user presses "up key" in different virtual terminals ?

As your subject says, this is "bash history". And yes, each instance of bash has its own separate history. It has nothing to do with your
terminal emulator or your desktop environment.

Where is it if not in ~/.bash_history?

Then it's wherever you changed it to.

Bash reads its history from a file (~/.bash_history by default) at
startup time, manages it in memory while running, and writes it back
out to the history file upon exiting.

Does this separate history get written to ~/.bash_history when terminal emulation thing is closed?

You need to specify *exactly* what you're doing.

If you close a terminal emulator in such a way that it kills the shell
without letting the shell write history to disk, then the history will
not be saved.

If you want history to be saved, you should exit from the *shell*
(e.g. by pressing Ctrl-D), rather than closing the terminal and counting
on that to terminate the shell in a way that will preserve history.

If you *don't* want history to be saved, there are many ways to make
that (not) happen, depending on your terminal emulator and so on. You'll
need to experiment, though, to see exactly what happens when you do
whatever it is you do.

Whenever I need to reboot my computer (kernel update or the like), I
decide which shells I want to retain history from, and I exit from those cleanly (^D). I leave the others running, and exit from FVWM, which
kills them in a way that causes their history not to be written.

If you want a particular shell window's history to be AGGRESSIVELY
written to disk every time you run a command, you can arrange for that
as well. See <https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/088> for example.

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On 2024-07-27 at 18:44, mick.crane wrote:

On 2024-07-27 23:08, Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Sat, Jul 27, 2024 at 22:50:17 +0100, mick.crane wrote:

In debian bookworm, xfce desktop, different virtual terminals
have a different history if same user presses "up key" in
different virtual terminals ?

As your subject says, this is "bash history". And yes, each
instance of bash has its own separate history. It has nothing to
do with your terminal emulator or your desktop environment.

Where is it if not in ~/.bash_history?

In memory.

Bash reads its history from a file (~/.bash_history by default) at
startup time, manages it in memory while running, and writes it
back out to the history file upon exiting.

As Greg wrote: bash reads it in at startup time, then manages it in
memory, then writes it back out when exiting.

Unless you've configured it otherwise, the place it reads the history in
from and writes it out to is ~/.bash_history.

In between those, each and every separate instance of the shell keeps
the history in memory. Yes, if I'm not mistaken that *does* mean that if
you have 20 terminals open you have 20 copies of (some version of) the
history in memory.

Does this separate history get written to ~/.bash_history when
terminal emulation thing is closed?

That depends on how you have things configured. It's not really
"separate", however; it's just that history is only written out when
bash exits (sufficiently cleanly), and that's just as true when you have multiple instances of bash as when you have only one.

--
The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw


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On 2024-07-27 22:50:17 +0100, mick.crane wrote:

In debian bookworm, xfce desktop, different virtual terminals have a different history if same user presses "up key" in different virtual terminals ?
Is this something that can be changed so history is shared between virtual terminals?

This is possible with zsh (option SHARE_HISTORY). But I do not use
this option: if I want to retrieve a command from another terminal,
I simply re-execute the shell to get the whole history of commands
typed so far (but there are other ways to manipulate the history).

--
Vincent LefΦvre <vincent@vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)

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On Sun, Jul 28, 2024 at 02:01:04 +0100, mick.crane wrote:

On 2024-07-27 23:58, Greg Wooledge wrote:

You need to specify *exactly* what you're doing.

Sometimes I forget where I was after closing a virtual terminal and it
would be handy to see the history
in a new terminal, where I "cd'd" to for example.
stuff like that.

No, I mean *how did you close the terminal*? And what terminal is it?

In the ideal scenario, if you closed the terminal by pressing Ctrl-D
in the shell, the history should be written to disk. Then, opening a
new terminal+shell should read that history into memory. You should be
able to search the previous shell's history in that new shell.

There are lots of ways this could fail. For example, you might be
closing the terminal window by using a window manager control button,
or by running the xkill(1) program and then clicking the window.

Or, you might have too many history lines in memory at the time you
exit the shell, and the cd command that you wanted to find might be
dropped because it was too far in the past. (Bash only stores 500
lines of history by default.)

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Le 7/28/24 à 05:24, Mike Castle a écrit :

On Sat, Jul 27, 2024 at 2:50 PM mick.crane <mick.crane@gmail.com> wrote:

Is this something that can be changed so history is shared between
virtual terminals?

Yes.

[...]

From my .bashrc file, I have the following history related settings:
# No limit on running shell history size
HISTSIZE=-1
# No limit on lines saved in history file
HISTFILESIZE=-1
# Enable timestamps in bash_history
HISTTIMEFORMAT="[%F %T %z] "
# Stop history being clobbered if there are multiple shells open
shopt -s histappend
# Immediately append history
PROMPT_COMMAND='history -a'

If you really want to try sharing history immediately between shells, use this:
PROMPT_COMMAND='history -a; history -n'

Note that PROMPT_COMMAND executes before printing a prompt, which
means after executing a command. So, if using "history -n", then
other shells will not load the shared history until a new prompt is
printed (e.g., hitting the ENTER key to display a new prompt).

For the record, I deal with the expected conflicts when merging
history files across machines by using a simple python program that
parses the history file (that includes the timestamps), discards the
conflict markers, orders by timestamps, and writes it back out. It is
by no means perfect, but "good enough for me".

For those worried about the unbounded history, I started doing that
about ten years ago and my work history is currently just shy of
180,000 commands. It would likely be less if I turned on the
"erasedups" feature, but I like to keep the context. And I've seen
comments about folks who have multiple decades of shell history. On
modern machines, it simply isn't an issue.

mrc

I second Mike Castle on this.

I have more or less the same config for my bash:

export HISTSIZE=-1 # write all commands to history file
export HISTTIMEFORMAT="%Y/%m/%d %H:%M:%S "
export HISTFILESIZE=-1 #don't truncate
export PROMPT_COMMAND="history -a; history -n" # [a]ppend commands to histfile immedatly,
# and read [n]ew entries (could be written from other terminals)

The PROMPT_COMMAND is where the magic happens:
Every time you press Enter,
your command is instantly recorded to the history file with history -a,
instead of waiting until bash exits properly.
This ensures you never lose track of any command,
even if your bash session ends unexpectedly.
Additionally, history -n allows your shell to read the bash history again, updating it with any new entries.

Imagine executing foo in terminal 1,
pressing Enter,
then switching to terminal 2.
By simply pressing Enter again and hitting the Up arrow,
you'll get the command foo.

This seamless synchronization across terminals enhances my productivity by ensuring all terminals are always in sync.

Best,


--
yassine -- sysadm
+213-779 06 06 23
http://about.me/ychaouche
Looking for side gigs.

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mick.crane wrote:

In debian bookworm, xfce desktop, different virtual terminals have a different history if same user presses "up key" in different virtual terminals ?
Is this something that can be changed so history is shared between
virtual terminals?
mick

not that i would want that,

but it would be possible for various terminals to save to
their own unique history files based upon terminal pty or
tty or anything else you'd like and to reload those upon
starting up again.

to keep my own setup consistent and to not keep certain
things in history i actually do the opposite of what you
want because i want certain commands already preloaded in
my history for all windows when i start up and then i adjust
my environment based upon which pty or directory i'm in.

i also consider it a security or privacy leak to keep
some information in history files of any kind so those get
cleaned up upon normal shutdowns or start ups.


songbird

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Le 7/28/24 à 12:19, songbird a écrit :

[...]
to keep my own setup consistent and to not keep certain
things in history i actually do the opposite of what you
want because i want certain commands already preloaded in
my history for all windows when i start up and then i adjust
my environment based upon which pty or directory i'm in.

I'm scratching my head here.
Can anyone provide a solid example or reason why preloading commands in history is necessary?

Best,

--
yassine -- sysadm
+213-779 06 06 23
http://about.me/ychaouche
Looking for side gigs.

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This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 4880 and 3156)
On 2024-07-28 at 09:29, Yassine Chaouche wrote:

Le 7/28/24 à 12:19, songbird a écrit :

to keep my own setup consistent and to not keep certain things in
history i actually do the opposite of what you want because i want
certain commands already preloaded in my history for all windows
when i start up and then i adjust my environment based upon which
pty or directory i'm in.

I'm scratching my head here.

Can anyone provide a solid example or reason why preloading commands
in history is necessary?

It's never *necessary*, AFAIK, but it *is* often convenient. (And in
many things, convenience is *the* deciding factor.)

It's often *far* easier to repeat a lengthy command from history (e.g.
via Ctrl+R and typing part of the command), either verbatim or with modifications, than by retyping it from scratch. I rely on this
extensively - more in my terminal-based SQL-database interaction
sessions than in the shell itself, because the commands there are far
more complex than those in the shell, but I certainly do also rely on it
in the shell.

If you expect to want to use similar commands repeatedly over multiple
shell sessions, why wouldn't you want them there in the history for
ready access?

--
The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw


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This is how I keep a long-term record of bash commands from different
sessions:
https://www.reddit.com/r/bash/comments/ak9c3r/

HTH

--
Karl Vogel I don't speak for anyone but myself

Comment: I use a screwdriver a lot
Reply: I'm all out of orange juice. Will straight vodka work?
--Reddit "What tool helped you as an early sysadmin?"

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