Ubuntu – Save the terminal history to a file for print

command linehistory

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 save the whole or at least the most important install commands I wrote. So basically the first 1k commands…

I would like to print that & save it to a file. So I can easily reinstall everything.

By the way, also save some hard researched config files that I don't remember where they are.

Best Answer

There is already a hidden file in your home directory called .bash_history which you can print it. One observation here: this file, in a default configuration, doesn't contain the commands used in your current opened terminal session. So, close the terminal before to print it.

But if you want to save the terminal history in another file, then you can use the following command (this new file will contain also and the commands used in your currently opened terminal session):

history > history_for_print.txt

A new file called history_for_print.txt will be created in your currently working directory containing your last used commands (by default HISTSIZE=1000 and HISTFILESIZE=2000, but you can change these values in your ~/.bashrc file).

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Ubuntu – centralized history file for all the commands run from various terminals

Command History is generally a feature provided by bash, and is stored per-user in the .bash_history file in your home directory.

While the history command may show you different histories in different terminals while those terminals are open, they will all be merged and written to the common ~/.bash_history file once you exit the terminals.

Ubuntu – How to save terminal history manually

The answers in the link that you provided from the Super-Users site shouldn't necessarily be viewed as 'workarounds' to the history command's default behavior. The bash shell has some sane, out of the box, default behavior.

I would highly recommend reading How can I avoid losing any history lines? for an explanation of what these modifications to history are doing. Additionally, there are some reasonable concerns to be aware of as to why this is not the default behavior of the history command.

performance - Since you are saving every command from every window with history -a, the .bash_history file can grow quite large and require greater resources to load the bash shell. This can result in longer start up times(for your terminal sessions, not overall system startup, per se.).
organization - (from the above article) "the history commands of simultaneous interactive shells (for a given user) will be intertwined. Therefore the history is not a guaranteed sequential list of commands as they were executed in a single shell."

If you are concerned about further securing the bash shell and the .bash_history file through auditing, take a look at this article: How do I log history or "secure" bash against history removal?

On occasion (e.g. an unstable system, or power failure), I have found the below commands useful.

Add the following lines to your ~/.bashrc file:

unset HISTFILESIZE
HISTSIZE=3000
PROMPT_COMMAND="history -a"
export HISTSIZE PROMPT_COMMAND

shopt -s histappend

Be sure to source your .bashrc file using the command source ~/.bashrc

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