[SOLVED] root .bash_history unexpectedly reset to 0 bytes

Pilsbert · 2014-09-09 08:07:42

Hi there,

yesterday evening I turned off my machine (using GNOME). Currently, I was logged in as root on a console and in parallel in my usually GNOME session. Today a logged in as root again to peform updates and I recognized that the root history is empty. That is, the .bash_history file is empty and was last modified at the exact time I turned off my machine yesterday. So what's the reason? Was this a bug or some sort of race condition during shutdown? I'm a little bit afraid someone modified something on the system and maybe tried to delete his traces by deleting the root bash history.

Kind regards

Last edited by Pilsbert (2014-09-11 09:33:31)

jasonwryan · 2014-09-09 08:29:10

Anything in your journal? Logs?

Not a Sysadmin issue, moving to NC...

Pilsbert · 2014-09-09 09:18:10

Thanks for your reply.

By scrolling over the journal entries since yesterday I did not recognize something special... An output of ps -ax also lists no abnormal process name.

I also performed an update yesterday, but only 5 packages were updated (ntp, colord, libqmi, libtracker-sparql, tracker).

So maybe it was only a bug that the content of the history was deleted.

jasonwryan · 2014-09-09 09:21:33

What are your history settings in root's bashrc?

Pilsbert · 2014-09-09 09:37:13

Actually, there is no .bashrc file in the /root directory. The /etc/bash.bashrc file looks like this

#
# /etc/bash.bashrc
#

# If not running interactively, don't do anything
[[ $- != *i* ]] && return

PS1='[\u@\h \W]\$ '
PS2='> '
PS3='> '
PS4='+ '

case ${TERM} in
xterm*|rxvt*|Eterm|aterm|kterm|gnome*)
PROMPT_COMMAND=${PROMPT_COMMAND:+$PROMPT_COMMAND; }'printf "\033]0;%s@%s:%s\007" "${USER}" "${HOSTNAME%%.*}" "${PWD/#$HOME/\~}"'

;;
screen)
PROMPT_COMMAND=${PROMPT_COMMAND:+$PROMPT_COMMAND; }'printf "\033_%s@%s:%s\033\\" "${USER}" "${HOSTNAME%%.*}" "${PWD/#$HOME/\~}"'
;;
esac

[ -r /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion ] && . /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion

jasonwryan · 2014-09-09 10:18:50

Please use code tags when pasting to the boards: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo … s_and_Code

See `man bash` for details on history settings, but if HISTFILE is not set, no history is saved when the shell exits.

Pilsbert · 2014-09-09 10:33:39

I'll use the code tag for posting code in the future.

But my installation exists for 1.5 years and I neither changed any bashrc file nor edited the HISTFILE environment variable. If I execute

 declare -p

as root in both gnome-terminal and a VT HISTFILE and HISTFILESIZE are correctly set (although root still hasn't any .bashrc file)

jasonwryan · 2014-09-09 19:15:38

Have you tried to replicate? You could run a strace while doing so to see if that turns up anything.

Pilsbert · 2014-09-11 08:17:13

I tried to replicate it two times. First by being logged in as root in a VT and in gnome-terminal at a time, and second being logged in as root only in a VT. Then i turned off the computer (using gnome-shell poweroff). Result: In both cases the root history was not deleted.

jasonwryan · 2014-09-11 09:01:48

See this thread: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 9#p1340529

Pilsbert · 2014-09-11 09:13:38

Thanks a lot!

You can mark this thread as solved

Last edited by Pilsbert (2014-09-11 09:15:06)

jasonwryan · 2014-09-11 09:21:45

Well, actually, you can... by editing your first post and prepending it to the title.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-09-09 08:07:42

[SOLVED] root .bash_history unexpectedly reset to 0 bytes

#2 2014-09-09 08:29:10

Re: [SOLVED] root .bash_history unexpectedly reset to 0 bytes

#3 2014-09-09 09:18:10

Re: [SOLVED] root .bash_history unexpectedly reset to 0 bytes

#4 2014-09-09 09:21:33

Re: [SOLVED] root .bash_history unexpectedly reset to 0 bytes

#5 2014-09-09 09:37:13

Re: [SOLVED] root .bash_history unexpectedly reset to 0 bytes

#6 2014-09-09 10:18:50

Re: [SOLVED] root .bash_history unexpectedly reset to 0 bytes

#7 2014-09-09 10:33:39

Re: [SOLVED] root .bash_history unexpectedly reset to 0 bytes

#8 2014-09-09 19:15:38

Re: [SOLVED] root .bash_history unexpectedly reset to 0 bytes

#9 2014-09-11 08:17:13

Re: [SOLVED] root .bash_history unexpectedly reset to 0 bytes

#10 2014-09-11 09:01:48

Re: [SOLVED] root .bash_history unexpectedly reset to 0 bytes

#11 2014-09-11 09:13:38

Re: [SOLVED] root .bash_history unexpectedly reset to 0 bytes

#12 2014-09-11 09:21:45

Re: [SOLVED] root .bash_history unexpectedly reset to 0 bytes

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