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How to effectively clear your bash history

Posted by the_doctor on · 3 comments
TechRepublic; By Jack Wallen 		Mail this story
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On your Linux machines, a history of your bash commands is retained. This is great when you need to repeat a command or can't remember exactly how you executed a command in a previous session. However, this can also be seen as a security issue. What if someone gains access to your machine, opens a terminal window, and checks through your bash history to see what commands you've run?

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Comments (3)

dotmatrix · 

rm ~/.bash_history
ln -s /dev/null ~/.bash_history
This will effectively act as a temporary history store for a given terminal or login instance's bash history. However, the history will be 'forgotten' upon exiting the terminal or login.

This trick also works with '~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel'

However, with recently-used... each login will create a new recently-used file which is deleted upon exit or new login ... I forget which.

I think that's right...
gus3 ·
Or, in your .bash_profile add the following line:

export HISTFILESIZE=0

This way, shell history is strictly per-process, and never saved/shared.
jdixon ·
In Linux/Unix, there are usually half a dozen ways to accomplish the same task.

Did anyone else make their cookies file in Netscape read only to keep it from storing cookies?

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