bash command "history -c" not working

[Herbivore]

Recently installed Linux Mint 8 Helena - Main Edition. Unlike in previous Mints, "history -c" does not clear bash history and I can not find the usual /.bash or /.history in home folder. After entering history -c in a terminal and trying to view history with the up arrow, there is no history. But when a new terminal opened, the up arrow again cycles through the command history. Typing sudo history -c produces

sudo: history: command not found

Any assistance appreciated.

[pompom]

Welcome to Linux Mint!

Maybe you are looking for the not correcto mundo file? It is quite possible that during the upgrade you were also upgraded to the latest bash, which may explain things. Neither one of these "commands" worked for me and I am using bash 4.0.33, because I am always running another bash instance one keystroke away at startup. Check if you have a history file

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locate history | grep bash

this returns /home/pompom/.bash_history and /usr/share/bashdb/command/history.sh.

If you want to clear the file, the Linux way of doing things would be

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> .bash_history

Cheers,

pompom

[Herbivore]

Interesting... With hidden files shown, Nautilus does not show /.bash_history even though when I ran your grep line I received same result as you:

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tmr@tmr-mint8 ~ $ locate history | grep bash
/home/tmr/.bash_history

Likewise, bash version 4.0.33.

But the search did not find any bash history db in /usr or anywhere else.

I looked up the command character ">" and found that it is called a redirection notation. Beyond me. And copying the command you gave, " > .bash_history", into the terminal produced no effect:

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tmr@tmr-mint8 / $ locate history | grep bash
/home/tmr/.bash_history
tmr@tmr-mint8 / $ > .bash_history
bash: .bash_history: Permission denied
tmr@tmr-mint8 / $ sudo > .bash_history
bash: .bash_history: Permission denied

Tried su and got:

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tmr-mint8 / # > .bash_history
tmr-mint8 / # 

which also did not work, bash history still there.

So, if it is not too much trouble to hand walk this newbie through the process of clearing bash history, I would be grateful.

[pompom]

Hi,

There's something amiss with your user account. Check under Administration -> Users and Groups and make sure everything is checked. For one thing, you should not need to become superuser in order to access BASH history file. You may have to 'chown' and/or 'chmod' to get the herring swimmin' again

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set | less

When you scroll down, you should see

HISTFILE=/home/pompom/.bash_history
HISTFILESIZE=500
HISTSIZE=500
HOME=/home/pompom

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ls -l ~/.bash_history

-rw------- 1 pompom pompom 252 2010-02-12 00:12 /home/pompom/.bash_history

The redirection operator with "nothing" prepended will zero out just about any file. Viz.

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> .bash_history

ls -l ~/.bash_history

-rw------- 1 pompom pompom 0 2010-02-12 00:16 /home/pompom/.bash_history

To prevent BASH from writing to .bash_history upon exit

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unset HISTFILE

After exit and running several commands followed by another exit, it still showing a zero byte file:

-rw------- 1 pompom pompom 0 2010-02-12 00:32 .bash_history

Cheers,

pompom