URGENT! Is there any command to get a history command lines and time in SUSE Linux.?

igsoper · 06-23-2009, 09:55 PM

I have to trace back what command and when it is used for the last 3 months. It is quite urgent as I have trouble with the system configuration... Please help me.

Thank you in advance.

Uncle_Theodore · 06-23-2009, 10:02 PM

What shell do you use? If it's bash, then
You can find the last 500 commands in your ~/.bash_history file
(that is, unless you set the variables $HISTFILE and $HISTFILESIZE to some other values). The file does NOT keep the dates. I don't know any other location that would save the commands you enter by default.

GrapefruiTgirl · 06-23-2009, 10:07 PM

Exactly as Uncle_Theodore says; I too don't know/believe that the history is preserved anywhere other than its usual place (wherever that is-- inside .bash_history I think) but: FWIW, it goes by number of commands, not time/date, and while I have my bash history set in the thousands of commands, it sometimes *still* isn't enough, even over a several-day period,

so for your future reference, perhaps you should consider setting your history to a very large number.

Sasha

igsoper · 06-23-2009, 11:29 PM

Thank you so much Uncle_Theodore and GrapefruiTgirl for the advice.

Have a very good day.

IGSoper

colucix · 06-24-2009, 01:19 AM

To keep the dates you have to set the environment variable HISTTIMEFORMAT. You can assign a format similar to that ones of the command date. For example:

Code:

export HISTTIMEFORMAT="%Y%m%d %H:%M:%S "

will print history as

Code:

20090623 08:19:13 date
20090623 08:19:14 whoami
20090623 08:19:15 make coffee

igsoper · 06-25-2009, 02:14 AM

Colucix, Thank you so much for the advice. I shall try it.