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fouric
Asked: 2013-11-04 09:43:37 +0800 CST

How can I automatically rotate/archive my bash history logs?

  • 772

I know that Bash has both HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE variables that control how long history is saved for, and how much of it is saved. I would like to keep an archive of my history. However, if I set either of the two variables mentioned above to a very large number, it makes searching for old commands very difficult, and after enough time they might get deleted anyway.

How can I automatically archive my bash history files once they get to a certain size, and is this method applicable to other log files (such as /var/log/auth.log)?

bash-history

5 Answers

  1. #!/bin/sh
# This script creates monthly backups of the bash history file. Make sure you have
# HISTSIZE set to large number (more than number of commands you can type in every
# month). It keeps last 200 commands when it "rotates" history file every month.
# Typical usage in a bash profile:
#
# HISTSIZE=90000
# source ~/bin/history-backup
#
# And to search whole history use:
# grep xyz -h --color ~/.bash_history.*
#

KEEP=200
BASH_HIST=~/.bash_history
BACKUP=$BASH_HIST.$(date +%y%m)

if [ -s "$BASH_HIST" -a "$BASH_HIST" -nt "$BACKUP" ]; then
  # history file is newer then backup
  if [[ -f $BACKUP ]]; then
    # there is already a backup
    cp -f $BASH_HIST $BACKUP
  else
    # create new backup, leave last few commands and reinitialize
    mv -f $BASH_HIST $BACKUP
    tail -n$KEEP $BACKUP > $BASH_HIST
    history -r
  fi
fi

    Taken from Never lost your bash history again on "https://lukas.zapletalovi.com".

    • 7

  2. You can use logrotate to backup your ~/.bash_history file.

    Create a config file for logrotate in /etc/logrotate.d/bash_history.

    /home/YOUR_USERNAME/.bash_history {
    weekly
    missingok
    rotate 5
    size 5000k
    nomail
    notifempty
    create 600 YOUR_USERNAME YOUR_USERNAME
}

    You can check if it works using this command:

    sudo logrotate --force /etc/logrotate.d/bash_history

    To see the files:

    ls ~/.bash_history*

    I found it on this webpage https://kowalcj0.github.io/2019/05/13/logrotate-bash-history/

    • 4

  3. This solution saves with date-time of execution:

    mkdir ~/.logs

    add this to your .bashrc or .bash_profile:

    export PROMPT_COMMAND='if [ "$(id -u)" -ne 0 ]; then echo "$(date "+%Y-%m-%d.%H:%M:%S") $(pwd) $(history 1)" >> ~/.logs/bash-history-$(date "+%Y-%m-%d").log; fi'

    to search in history type:

    grep -h logcat ~/.logs/bash-history-2016-04*

    taken from https://spin.atomicobject.com/2016/05/28/log-bash-history/

    • 2

  4. There is a bash script recommendation here

    • 1

  5. To answer your second question first:

    The Ubuntu log files are already processed by logrotate to keep them managable and within size limits.

    You can possibly even "abuse" it for your history files, it is quite convenient.

    • 1