.sh_history question

[Chris Conrad]

OK, my account has command history (ie. I can recall previous commands using k, but I do not have an environmental variable called HISTFILE. The system is using my Home/.sh_history file to store the commands. Where is this getting set up? I've searched /etc/profile, and home/.profile and it doesn't get set up in either place.
HELP!

[Marco Santerre]

If you do not have this environment variable set in one of your profiles, it automatically defaults to $HOME/.sh_history. If you want to change it, you'll have to define it in one of your profiles .

[Jose Mosquera]

Hi,

In your $HOME/.profile set:

EDITOR=vi
export EDITOR

HISTFILE=/.sh_history; export HISTFILE
HISTSIZE=10000; export HISTSIZE


Rgds.

[John Palmer · Accepted solution]

Hi,

You don't need HISTFILE (unless you are root). The default is to use $HOME/.sh_history (see man sh-posix).

If you want to set HISTFILE to a different value, do it in your .profile.

Regards,
John

[Helen French]

This is normally set up on the profile file (local). If you don't have one specified, then you can add it the $HOME/.profile file:
HISTSIZE=4096
HISTFILE=/.sh_history

The default is in $HOME directory.

[Chris Conrad]

OK, I'll buy that. But what might cause , k to not work on some of my systems?

[Marco Santerre]

add

set -o vi

in your .profile where your k doesn't work

[Helen French]

Once you setup the HISTFILE on profile file, you will be able to use the Esc+k function. For temp. purpose, use this:
# ksh -o vi

[Chris Conrad]

Thanks! I'll check that out.

[John Palmer]

Command history should always work for non-root accounts.

For root however, HP insist that HISTFILE is defined. This wasn't always the case and came in either at 10.20 or 11.00 so an older version would work.

Just put:
export HISTFILE=

in root's .profile and it should work OK.

Regards,
John

[John Palmer]

Looks like HISTFILE for root became mandatory in one of the 10. releases.

Have a look at /usr/share/doc/10.xRelNotes

Regards,
John