How to time stamp history file

[joseph wholey]

Can anyone advise on a slick way to time stamp the history file?

[Bryan Eley]

Joseph,

Maybe something like Rick Garland recommended?

HST=`hostname`
USR=`who -um | awk '{print $1}'`
NAME=`whoami`# Set History File
HISTFILE=/home/root/.sh_history_"${HST}"_"${USR}"-as-"${NAME}"_`date +%y%m%d.%
H%M%S_$$`
export HISTFILE

I can't claim to be the clever person behind this, but I found the reference in this itrc thread: http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=901609&admit=-682735245+1144174017758+28353475

[Rick Garland]

Thanks Bryan.

That was going to be my suggestion.

What is happening is that a new history file is created with each login session. Each of these files is time/date stamped. Since you can't get the stamps in the file for each line item, you can place a timeon the additions to the file.

[joseph wholey]

There is no way to append "#info info info" to each line in the .sh_history? Not even with a trap or something along those lines?

[Rick Garland]

What could work as an example, you could append the output of the `date` command to the $HIST file.

echo `date` >> $HIST

This will insert the date into the history file as defined by $HIST. However this is a manual process.

To automate, something in the profile might do the trick (this is a guess, not an answer)
while true
do
echo `date` >> $HIST
sleep 300
done

This little while loop will append/echo the `date` output every 5 minutes to the $HIST file.

[Rick Garland]

No, don't do that while loop in the profile - when you login you will not get a prompt

[joseph wholey]

I already tried that echo `date` >> $HIST... it writes "echo `date` >> $HIST" to the history file (unfortunately).

[Mike Stroyan]

With bash you can just set the HISTTIMEFORMAT variable. That causes history to display the time for each command. It also puts timestamps in the history file.

HISTTIMEFORMAT="%D %T "

[joseph wholey]

Is there anything similar for KSH?

[Mike Stroyan]

ksh doesn't have any feature intended to put timestamps in history. You can get a similar effect by combining the evaluation of the PS1 prompt and the "read -s" feature that reads into history.

PS1='$(printf "%(# %D %T )T" | read -s)$ '

This prompt setting will put the current date and time into the history each time ksh comes back to printing a prompt. The timestamp will appear as a separate line. It will show the time that the preceeding command completed. You won't be able to know exactly when a long-running command was started. (The bash timestamp feature shows the start times of entered commands and doesn't show when they finish.)