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hd.
Asked: 2012-09-23 21:44:30 +0800 CST

How to clear bash history completely?

  • 772

I want to clear all previous commands from the history of my server. I used history -c and it seems all things are cleared but when I ssh to the server, all the commands are still there.

How can I clear them permanently?

bash

9 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The file ~/.bash_history holds the history.

    To clear the bash history completely on the server, open terminal and type

    cat /dev/null > ~/.bash_history

    Other alternate way is to link ~/.bash_history to /dev/null

    However,

    One annoying side-effect is that the history entries has a copy in the memory and it will flush back to the file when you log out.

    To workaround this, use the following command (worked for me):

    cat /dev/null > ~/.bash_history && history -c && exit
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  2. What to do:

    In every open bash shell (you may have multiple terminals open):

    history -c
history -w

    Why: As noted above, history -c empties the file ~/.bash_history. It is important to note that bash shell does not immediately flush history to the bash_history file. So, it is important to (1) flush the history to the file, and (2) clear the history, in all terminals. That's what the commands above do.

    Reference: http://www.giannistsakiris.com/index.php/2007/09/13/how-to-clear-bash-history-and-what-to-watch-out-for/

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  3. execute the following commands to clear history forever

    history -c && history -w

    good luck!

    • 85

  4. There's another much simpler one: running history -c on the terminal prompt and gone are all entries in the bash_history file.

    • 19

  5. Clear the current shell's history:

    history -c

    When you log out, your current shell's history is appended to ~/.bash_history, which is a cache of previous shells' histories, to a maximum number (see HISTFILESIZE in "man bash").

    If you want to remove the history altogether, then you essentially have to empty out ~/.bash_history which many of the above entries have suggested. Such as:

    history -c && history -w

    This clears the current shell's history and then forces the current shell's history (empty) to overwrite ~/.bash_history....or to be more accurate, it forces it to overwrite HISTFILE (which defaults to ~/.bash_history).

    Hope this helps.

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  6. Another way to do this is deleting the ~/.bash_history file by using rm ~/.bash_history command. When you login another time, the .bash_history file will be automatically created.

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  7. rm ~/.bash_history; history -c; logout

    Now log back in and witness that your arrow-up doesn't give you anything.

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  8. Try this one

    edit your .profile and add the line below at the end of the file

    rm -f .bash_history

    this way, every time you login, it will delete your .bash_history file automatically for you. Adding the -r recursive remove option seems dangerous and not needed.

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  9. If you want the history not to be saved in the first place, you should add this to your ~/.profile:

    unset HISTFILE

    That's it.
    All new invocations of bash (if you re-login) will not log anything. After that you can delete the old ~/.bash_history file as well if you want.

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