How to edit (remove) some entries from history of root user with out trace...

[senthil_kumar_1]

Hi All,

How to edit (remove) some entries from history of root user with out trace...

[Dennis Handly]

I'm not sure why you would ever want to do this, unless it is for some nefarious purpose.

I suppose you may want to remove a password that was on a command line?

You can simply use vi.  I'm not sure if the file will be a valid history file after that, since the file is binary.

Of course if you have auditing enabled, then you may have that vi usage logged.

[Bill Hassell]

The shell history kept by the POSIX shell, Korn shell or even bash is not 100% ASCII. There are binary characters kept in the file for positioning. If you delete or add any lines, the history will be non-functional. The only way to restore the history and recall function is to empty the file completely.