Howto Add time And Date To Your Bash History

Duffy — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:00:27 +0000

This comes in very handy if your trying to track back when you had last run something.
To enable it just simply add export HISTTIMEFORMAT="%h/%d - %H:%M:%S " to your .bashrc file

echo 'export HISTTIMEFORMAT="%h/%d - %H:%M:%S "' >> ~/.bashrc

Then reload your .bashrc

source ~/.bashrc

Now when you run history you should get a output similar to the one below

   502  Aug/12 - 13:48:31 tail -f /home/duffy/log/access.log
  503  Aug/12 - 13:49:01 echo hello
  504  Aug/12 - 13:49:24 more /var/log/syslog

Some other bash history tips

The best way of finding something quickly in your bash history is simply by pressing ctrl+r and then typing out the start of the command it will auto complete it with any matches found in your bash history

If you don't want to save duplicate commands in your bash history simply add export HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth to your .bashrc
```
echo 'export HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth' >> ~/.bashrc
```

If you want to change the lenght of history add export HISTSIZE=1000 to your .bashrc
```
echo 'export HISTSIZE=1000' >> ~/.bashrc
```

Creating aliases in bash

Duffy — Sat, 23 May 2009 02:15:52 +0000

Are you tired off typing out full commands? if so aliases can save you time. They allow you to shorten long commands down into one word. To add a alias edit ~/.bashrc

nano ~/.bashrc

Then come to the bottom of that file and add your aliases like this:

alias rm = "rm -i"
alias lightyrestart = "/etc/init.d/lighttpd restart"
alias server_name="ssh -v -l USERNAME IP ADDRESS"

Then Reload your .bashrc file and your aliases should be enabled

source ~/.bashrc

Tuts4Tech » time

Howto Add time And Date To Your Bash History

Some other bash history tips

Creating aliases in bash