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Old 08-04-2009, 09:03 AM   #1
rodent
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Changing bash history size


Hi,

I've tried reading man pages and googling to answer this and ended up wanting to kill myself. Trying to do things on Linux (in this case, Ubuntu) makes me feel that way every day.

So, my question: how do I change the size of my .bash_history file? I just want it to store 20000 lines instead of the default 500. And - do profiles affect in any way the way command history behaves?

Thanks,
R.
 
Old 08-04-2009, 09:06 AM   #2
MensaWater
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The bash man page has this:

Quote:
HISTFILESIZE
The maximum number of lines contained in the history file. When this variable is assigned a value, the history file is truncated, if necessary, by removing the oldest entries, to contain no more than that number of lines. The default value is 500.
The history file is also truncated to this size after writing it when an interactive shell exits.
That is a variable you set at command line or can add to your bash_profile or .bashrc
e.g.
export HISTFILESIZE=1000

Last edited by MensaWater; 08-04-2009 at 09:45 AM. Reason: mistyped HISTFILESIZE as HISTFILE as pointed out by Jay73
 
Old 08-04-2009, 09:17 AM   #3
jay73
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Careful, histfile is not the same thing as histfilesize.
 
Old 08-04-2009, 09:45 AM   #4
MensaWater
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jay73 View Post
Careful, histfile is not the same thing as histfilesize.
Fixed it - thanks for catching that - I just mistyped it.
 
Old 08-04-2009, 09:47 AM   #5
rodent
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So, I need to add the line
Quote:
export HISTFILE=1000
to ~/.bashrc ?
Or run 'export HISTFILE=1000' (or 'export HISTFILESIZE=1000') from a terminal, assuming it will change the setting permanently?
And how do Terminal profiles interact with history? Do they all share the same .bash_history file, or is there a separate one for each profile? I'm launching my terminal as follows: gnome-terminal --window-with-profile=c --geometry=170x50.
(I actually had to guess and experiment with '--geometry' because all the gnome-terminal manpage had to say on this option was a paraphrase on "go search....".)

Thanks, and sorry about being so dramatic before.
It's my frustration speaking, not me....

R.
 
Old 08-04-2009, 10:04 AM   #6
rodent
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Hi,

I added:

Quote:
export HISTFILESIZE=20000
shopt -s histappend
to ~/.bashrc

It worked!
Found those lines in ~/.bash_profile.
Edit: and, apparently, all profiles share the same history file.

Thanks,
R.

Last edited by rodent; 08-04-2009 at 10:05 AM.
 
Old 08-04-2009, 12:21 PM   #7
Ajit Gunge
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question related to .bashrc

HI after doing hte changes suggested in this thread my .bashhistory should contain maximum 20000 commands isnt it
 
Old 08-04-2009, 02:08 PM   #8
rodent
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What I posted in my last post works on Ubuntu.
Bash will keep appending commands to ~/.bash_history until it reaches 20K lines, at which point for each new command added the oldest one at that moment will be removed.
 
Old 09-12-2009, 10:08 PM   #9
abefroman
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Code:
shopt -s histappend
Can I ask what this does?

Also the history command is not displaying all of the links in .bash_history???
Code:
root@server [~]# cat .bash_history |wc -l
1601
root@server [~]# history | wc -l
1000
What gives?

Last edited by abefroman; 09-12-2009 at 10:12 PM.
 
Old 09-14-2009, 10:13 AM   #10
MensaWater
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I believe history in bash is buffered and not written to the history file until you exit the session.
 
Old 09-14-2009, 10:27 AM   #11
abefroman
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jlightner View Post
I believe history in bash is buffered and not written to the history file until you exit the session.
That is true, but I logged back out and then back in, the history command is only displaying 1000 lines by default.
 
  


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