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casper27's Avatar
Posts: 844 | Thanked: 521 times | Joined on Jan 2009 @ UK southampton
#1
As the title says Xterm does not seem to save all previous executed commands. Usually in terminal you can press the up arrow and scroll through previous command to save typing it all again. Xterm seems vert hit and miss saving some and missing quite alot. Anyone else have this or have found a work around?
 

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#2
I think this is down to the use of ash as the default shell. One option is to install bash, and configure user to use it. It works for me. Its in one of the extras(-foo) repos somewhere, all usual caveats apply.
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#3
Thanks I will give it a bash..... No pun intended lol
Cheers
 
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#4
Originally Posted by casper27 View Post
As the title says Xterm does not seem to save all previous executed commands. Usually in terminal you can press the up arrow and scroll through previous command to save typing it all again. Xterm seems vert hit and miss saving some and missing quite alot. Anyone else have this or have found a work around?
Chances are your history is set to a small number and its only saving the last 10 commands or so - you can tweak that in your profile.
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#5
It's possible that your .ash_history has the incorrect permissions/ownership. This should only occur if the first time you open xterm you sudo gainroot - since no .ash_history exists, when you exit root's shell it is created with only root having permission to write (preventing non-root command history from being written to the file).

Use 'ls -l /home/user/.ash_history' to verify. If the file is owned by root (3rd column), that is your problem.

sudo gainroot
chown user.users /home/user/.ash_history

OR

sudo gainroot
chmod a+w /home/user/.ash_history

Either will fix the permissions to allow non-root command history to be retained.

Last edited by rewt; 2009-12-14 at 18:44.
 

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casper27's Avatar
Posts: 844 | Thanked: 521 times | Joined on Jan 2009 @ UK southampton
#6
Originally Posted by rewt View Post
It's possible that your .ash_history has the incorrect permissions/ownership. This will probably only occur if the first time you open xterm you sudo gainroot - since no .ash_history exists, when you exit root's shell it is created owner=root, group=root preventing non-root command history from being written to the file.

Use 'ls -l /home/user/.ash_history' to verify. If the file is owned by root (3rd column), that is your problem.

sudo gainroot
chown user.users /home/user/.ash_history

OR

sudo gainroot
chmod a+w /home/user/.ash_history

Either will fix the permissions to allow non-root command history to be retained.
Sweet worked great cheers.
 
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#7
Two notes about this:

First, I found that ~/.ash_history, the file where ash normally saves history information, had root as the owner and group; this prevented saving history. Check and see if you have the same problem, and if so, remove ~/.ash_history. See bug 5896 for one reason that might happen.

Second, note that history does *not* get saved if you click the X in the upper-right corner of the xterm. Instead, type "exit", or press ctrl-d. See bug 5317 for that.

Last edited by josh; 2009-12-14 at 18:47.
 

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#8
Originally Posted by qole View Post
By the way, anyone tried bash for the N900 yet?
Yes. Working fine for me at the mo. Only for user, root still uses ash.
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Class .. : Lame hacker & beardy boffin
Humour . : [#######---] Alignment: Apathetic anarchist
Patience : [####------] Weapon(s): My cat, my code.
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"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not."
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#9
Originally Posted by qole View Post
Now I know it is because I usually use the "X" icon to close my terminals. I will use "exit" from now on.
Note also the easier workaround buried at the end of bug 5317 comment 7:

Code:
echo "trap exit SIGHUP SIGINT SIGTERM" >> /home/user/.profile
(though I think catching just SIGHUP should be enough for the osso-xterm case).
 

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#10
Originally Posted by lma View Post
Note also the easier workaround buried at the end of bug 5317 comment 7:

Code:
echo "trap exit SIGHUP SIGINT SIGTERM" >> /home/user/.profile
(though I think catching just SIGHUP should be enough for the osso-xterm case).
Yeah, I can confirm that just
Code:
echo 'trap exit SIGHUP' >> .profile
makes ash save history even if you just close the xterm.
 
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