I use ubuntu 11.04, and the question must be common to any bash shell. Pressing the up arrow key on your terminal will retrieve the previous command you had executed at your terminal.
My question is where(in which file) will all these command history be stored? Can I read that file?
the history filename was stored in variable : $HISTFILE
echo $HISTFILE
will give you the right file.
Usually in bash it would be ~/.bash_history, however it could be changed by configuration.
also notice that sometimes the very last commands is not stored in that file. running
history -a
will persistent.
history -r
will clean those command not yet written to the file.
For bash, it is by default in ~/.bash_history (check the HISTFILE environment variable if it isn't). You can directly cat the file or use the history command.
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I have a command that runs fine if I ssh to a machine and run it, but fails when I try to run it using a remote ssh command like :
ssh user#IP <command>
Comparing the output of "env" using both methods resutls in different environments. When I manually login to the machine and run env, I get much more environment variables then when I run :
ssh user#IP "env"
Any idea why ?
There are different types of shells. The SSH command execution shell is a non-interactive shell, whereas your normal shell is either a login shell or an interactive shell. Description follows, from man bash:
A login shell is one whose first character of argument
zero is a -, or one started with the --login option.
An interactive shell is one started without non-option
arguments and without the -c option whose standard input
and error are both connected to terminals (as determined
by isatty(3)), or one started with the -i option. PS1 is
set and $- includes i if bash is interactive, allowing a
shell script or a startup file to test this state.
The following paragraphs describe how bash executes its
startup files. If any of the files exist but cannot be
read, bash reports an error. Tildes are expanded in file
names as described below under Tilde Expansion in the
EXPANSION section.
When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as
a non-interactive shell with the --login option, it first
reads and executes commands from the file /etc/profile, if
that file exists. After reading that file, it looks for
~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile, in that
order, and reads and executes commands from the first one
that exists and is readable. The --noprofile option may
be used when the shell is started to inhibit this behav
ior.
When a login shell exits, bash reads and executes commands
from the file ~/.bash_logout, if it exists.
When an interactive shell that is not a login shell is
started, bash reads and executes commands from ~/.bashrc,
if that file exists. This may be inhibited by using the
--norc option. The --rcfile file option will force bash
to read and execute commands from file instead of
~/.bashrc.
When bash is started non-interactively, to run a shell
script, for example, it looks for the variable BASH_ENV in
the environment, expands its value if it appears there,
and uses the expanded value as the name of a file to read
and execute. Bash behaves as if the following command
were executed:
if [ -n "$BASH_ENV" ]; then . "$BASH_ENV"; fi
but the value of the PATH variable is not used to search
for the file name.
How about sourcing the profile before running the command?
ssh user#host "source /etc/profile; /path/script.sh"
You might find it best to change that to ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bashrc, or whatever.
(As here (linuxquestions.org))
Shell environment does not load when running remote ssh command. You can edit ssh environment file:
vi ~/.ssh/environment
Its format is:
VAR1=VALUE1
VAR2=VALUE2
Also, check sshd configuration for PermitUserEnvironment=yes option.
I had similar issue, but in the end I found out that ~/.bashrc was all I needed.
However, in Ubuntu, I had to comment the line that stops processing ~/.bashrc :
#If not running interactively, don't do anything
[ -z "$PS1" ] && return
I found an easy resolution for this issue was to add
source /etc/profile
to the top of the script.sh file I was trying to run on the target system.
On the systems here, this caused the environmental variables which were needed by script.sh to be configured as if running from a login shell.
In one of the prior responses it was suggested that ~/.bashr_profile etc... be used.
I didn't spend much time on this but, the problem with this is if you ssh to a different user on the target system than the shell on the source system from which you log in it appeared to me that this causes the source system user name to be used for the ~.
Just export the environment variables you want above the check for a non-interactive shell in ~/.bashrc.
I learnt that a tee command will store the STDOUT to a file as well as outputs to terminal.
But, here the problem is every time I have to give tee command, for every command I give.
Is there any way or tool in linux, so that what ever I run in terminal, it should store the command as well as output. (I used tee command in MySQL, where it will store all the commands and outputs to a file of that entire session. I am expecting a tool similar to this.)
Edit:
When I run script -a log.txt, I see ^M characters as well as ^[ and ^] characters in log.txt file. I used various dos2unix, :set ff=unix, :set ff=dos commands, but they didn't helped me in removing these ^[, ^] characters.
Is there any method, I can directly get the plain text file (with out these extra chars).
OS: RHEL 5
You can use script command which writes everything on file
script -f log.txt
you could use aliases like such alias ls="ls;echo ls >>log" so every time you run ls it runs echo ls >>log too.
But script would probably be better in this case, just dont go into vi while you are in script.
I'm logged into a remote server via SFTP at the command line. The folder I'm in contains hundreds of thousands of files. I need to get a list of these files in a text file so I can access them programmatically, as none of the PHP SFTP clients are able to return such a large list of files.
When I run an ls on the directory ( within the SFTP session ), it takes about 20 minutes for the file list to finally display.
I don't have write access on this server, so I can't pipe the output to a file on the remote server.
How can I pipe the output to a text file on my local machine ... or get a list of the files to my local machine some other way?
If you're willing to wait the 20 minutes for the data to scroll across your screen you can capture all the output using "script".
Call 'script' before you start your ssh or sftp session and it will capture all terminal output to your local disk. Type 'exit' to finish the capture.
NAME
script -- make typescript of terminal session
SYNOPSIS
script [-akq] [-t time] [file [command ...]]
DESCRIPTION
The script utility makes a typescript of everything printed on your ter-
minal. It is useful for students who need a hardcopy record of an inter-
active session as proof of an assignment, as the typescript file can be
printed out later with lpr(1).
If the argument file is given, script saves all dialogue in file. If no
file name is given, the typescript is saved in the file typescript.
If the argument command is given, script will run the specified command
with an optional argument vector instead of an interactive shell.
The following options are available:
-a Append the output to file or typescript, retaining the prior con-
tents.
-k Log keys sent to program as well as output.
-q Run in quiet mode, omit the start and stop status messages.
-t time
Specify time interval between flushing script output file. A
value of 0 causes script to flush for every character I/O event.
The default interval is 30 seconds.
The script ends when the forked shell (or command) exits (a control-D to
exit the Bourne shell (sh(1)), and exit, logout or control-D (if
ignoreeof is not set) for the C-shell, csh(1)).
Certain interactive commands, such as vi(1), create garbage in the type-
script file. The script utility works best with commands that do not
manipulate the screen. The results are meant to emulate a hardcopy ter-
minal, not an addressable one.
ENVIRONMENT
The following environment variable is utilized by script:
SHELL If the variable SHELL exists, the shell forked by script will be
that shell. If SHELL is not set, the Bourne shell is assumed.
(Most shells set this variable automatically).
SEE ALSO
csh(1) (for the history mechanism).
HISTORY
The script command appeared in 3.0BSD.
BUGS
The script utility places everything in the log file, including linefeeds
and backspaces. This is not what the naive user expects.
It is not possible to specify a command without also naming the script
file because of argument parsing compatibility issues.
When running in -k mode, echo cancelling is far from ideal. The slave
terminal mode is checked for ECHO mode to check when to avoid manual echo
logging. This does not work when in a raw mode where the program being
run is doing manual echo.
Wu's answer is good if you do it remotely. Here is another option if you are logged onto the remote server and want to send the file back home to yourself:
Proper answer is here: http://scratching.psybermonkey.net/2011/02/ssh-how-to-pipe-output-from-local-to.html
your_command | ssh username#server "cat > filename.txt"
If you have ssh access, that would be very easy:
ssh user#server ls > foo.txt
Otherwise, you can just redirect sftp's STDOUT and STDERR to a file. You have to type password and commands blindly though.
In my case following worked:
ssh user#server ls /path/to/source/folder/ > /path/to/destination/folder/filenames.txt
I wrote it in Git Bash. This will first ssh then list all files of source folder and then save the file names to the destination text file.
In this way you can also save the output to json file. Just change the file extension to json instead of txt.
For appending output just put ">>" instead of ">".
I know history will capture commands that I run, but it is shell specific. I work with multiple shells and multiple hosts and would like to write a small script which, after every command I run, dumps that command to some file along with the host name. This way, i can implement my own history command which reads from that file, and can take a host as an argument which would be handy for me. I'm not sure how to get the first part though..i.e., get every shell command I type to trigger a "dump that command into a file" part. Any ideas?
Thanks
In bash, the PROMPT_COMMAND environment variable contains a command that will be executed before the PS1 prompt is displayed. So yours could be something like history | tail -n1 | perl -npe 's/^\s+\d+\s+//' | yourcommand HOST
The script utility should solve your problem. It records everything you type and all that is printed on the terminal in a file (even including terminal control codes, so if you cat that file on the console, you even reproduce the original text colors).
I've been editing .bashrc files and other init files, and it seems that I've left behind a few code snippets or two that are causing a few errors at the prompt (e.g. file missing), but I can't find them.
How do I debug the prompt to find out what init scripts I've carelessly hacked?
Most of the shells have debug flags that show the commands being executed. Bash may even have one that shows a command before expansion of variables and after. Have you tried checking (I believe) -c -x or -X flags and see if they show the information you are looking for.
You can set them as first thing in the rc files (most global one) or just pass it down into bash command by invoking it from another shell.
In fact, if you invoke bash from another shell, you can also use script command to record everything you see and do into the file, which makes postmortem analysis so much easier.
Try invoking bash with the -x flag, then sourcing your .bashrc or .bash_profile or whatever you're using. That ought to be prolix enough to find your problem
ie:
bash -x
source .bashrc
The easiest way to get a clean initial state is to SSH into your current host, but instead of letting SSH launch your shell with default settings, you provide an explicit command which prevents .bashrc from being read.
ssh -tt localhost /bin/bash --norc
The -tt forces SSH to allocate a TTY, which is what would normally happen when you open a shell connection, but is not default when running an explicit command.
The --norc prevents bash from reading your settings file (since we want to do that ourselves).
You should now be at a bash prompt, in a clean environment. This is useful for examining what variable are set to before your .bashrc runs etc. Enable tracing and source your .bashrc:
set -x # Enable tracing
source .bashrc
Try to see where you've defined prompt - probably it in some dot file in your home directory:
grep PS1 ~/.*
You can see current value of prompt by just printing it:
echo $PS1
HTH
Check the .bash_history file in your home directory to find out what commands you have been running. If you used commands like vi filename to open the init scripts, it will find them in the command history.