Enable Bash History in VCF Cloud Builder
Enable history for the current session:
1admin@vcf-m01-cb01 [ ~ ]$ set -o history
Enable history on each login:
1admin@vcf-m01-cb01 [ ~ ]$ echo set -o history >> .bashrc
More info
Bash history is disabled by default (VCF 5.x).
To enable bash history in VCF Cloud Builder: SSH to Cloud Builder
1C:\>ssh admin@vcf-m01-cb01.lab2.vmw.one
2Welcome to Photon 4.0 (\m) - Kernel \r (\l)
3(admin@vcf-m01-cb01.lab2.vmw.one) Password:
4admin@vcf-m01-cb01 [ ~ ]$
You can check there's no .bash_history file:
1admin@vcf-m01-cb01 [ ~ ]$ ls -la
2total 20
3drwxr-x--- 2 admin vcf 4096 Feb 25 11:03 .
4drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Feb 25 11:03 ..
5-rw-r--r-- 1 admin vcf 178 May 9 2024 .bash_logout
6-rw-r--r-- 1 admin vcf 643 May 9 2024 .bash_profile
7-rw-r--r-- 1 admin vcf 451 May 9 2024 .bashrc
8admin@vcf-m01-cb01 [ ~ ]$
You can check what is already enabled. Notice history off:
1admin@vcf-m01-cb01 [ ~ ]$ set -o
2allexport off
3braceexpand on
4emacs on
5errexit off
6errtrace off
7functrace off
8hashall on
9histexpand on
10history off
11ignoreeof off
12interactive-comments on
13keyword off
14monitor on
15noclobber off
16noexec off
17noglob off
18nolog off
19notify off
20nounset off
21onecmd off
22physical off
23pipefail off
24posix off
25privileged off
26verbose off
27vi off
28xtrace off
To enable Bash history, type set -o history.
1admin@vcf-m01-cb01 [ ~ ]$ set -o history
By default it will keep the last 1,000 commands, defined by $HISTSIZE. The .bash_history file will be truncated by the value of $HISTFILESIZE.
1admin@vcf-m01-cb01 [ ~ ]$ echo $HISTSIZE
21000
3admin@vcf-m01-cb01 [ ~ ]$ echo $HISTFILESIZE
41000
Add these lines to .bashrc to enable history on each login. (HISTSIZE/HISTFILESIZE optional):
1admin@vcf-m01-cb01 [ ~ ]$ echo set -o history >> .bashrc
2admin@vcf-m01-cb01 [ ~ ]$ echo HISTSIZE=2000 >> .bashrc
3admin@vcf-m01-cb01 [ ~ ]$ echo HISTFILESIZE=2000 >> .bashrc
Now you can press the up arrow and review the history by typing history and more.
Deleting history
If there's something you don't want in history, you can delete specific line(s), or wipe it all out.
Delete specific Bash history line history -d <line number>:
1admin@vcf-m01-cb01 [ ~ ]$ history -d 18
Delete a range of history lines.
1admin@vcf-m01-cb01 [ /home ]$ history -d 11-18
Delete all Bash history. The -c option clears the current history session and -w writes the current history session to .bash_history.
1admin@vcf-m01-cb01 [ ~ ]$ history -c
2admin@vcf-m01-cb01 [ ~ ]$ history -w
Check out the official Bash Reference Manual for more.