Hey all,
Is use debian lenny and kernel 2.6.26-2-xen-amd64 and want do show timestamps per command in bash history. It works an most machines, but one machine doesn't.
I export HISTTIMEFORMAT in "etc/profile":
I look it with user xyz, history works. If i 'su -', history works, too. But if i just 'su', there's no history saved.
If I export HISTTIMEFORMAT in /root/.bashrc, history works for "su", too.

Couriously, if i switch to root-user per "su", and I list the environment-variables with 'env', I can see that HISTTIMEFORMAT is set correctly, but seems to be ignored. No other History-Variables like HISTCONTROL are set.

As I told, the same configuration works on other machines without any problems. I would be pleased for every hint to understand this issue. Thx.

Well, if you don't use - then login profile for root is not executed, and your environment variables, and aliases will not change. What distro/s are on the other machines?

Thanx for you answer.

There are about 20 debian lenny and 20 debian squeeze where the HISTTIMEFORMAT works. It doesn't work an a single debian egde machine, but I've just one and this will be updated very soon so I don't care about this one.

What I don't understand: The environment variable HISTTIMEFORMAT is set correctly, and I can't see any difference in the configuration of the machine where is it works and the one (two) who doesn't.

Hmm, you have to understand that Etch is very old release now and since it's just one machine which will be updated as you said...

Maybe you could read release notes for Etch;
http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/releasenotes

There maybe you'll find something. I can't tell at this moment how things were set up in Etch, but there've been something like 50 000 package changes between Etch and Squeeze.

After updating this machine to squeeze, HISTTIMEFORMAT works fine. Thanx for your answers.