bash history: can't retrieve commands/commands not saved

Question

I suddenly got a problem with my bash history. When I type history, it only shows:

 1  history

I tried following commands:

set -o | grep history 
echo $HISTFILE
echo $HISTSIZE
echo $HISTFILESIZE

and I got, respectively, the following results:

history         on
/home/mary/.bash_history
1000
2000

I added also to my bashrc, the following lines:

# Avoid duplicates
HISTCONTROL=ignoredups:erasedups
# When the shell exits, append to the history file instead of overwriting it
shopt -s histappend

# After each command, append to the history file and reread it
PROMPT_COMMAND="${PROMPT_COMMAND:+$PROMPT_COMMAND$'\n'}history -a; history -c; history -r"

Everything seems OK but I can't scroll back to retrieve commands and the reason seems the fact that nothing has saved in history and that is why the command history does not contain anything.

Could you please help me to solve this issue ?

Have you looked inside `/home/mary/.bash_history`? It should contain the information you're looking for ... — , Feb 03 '21 at 08:38
It's indicated that the permission is denied. I can't even scroll back to the previous command written in the terminal. — user790082, Feb 03 '21 at 08:49
What's the ownership of `/home/mary/.bash_history` - is it owned by you? This can be seen with the command `ls -la`. — Artur Meinild, Feb 03 '21 at 08:52

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 03 '21 at 09:52

1

The answer resides in the ownership of the bash_history which was root. I did:

sudo chown mary:mary /home/mary/.bash_history

and that solved the problem.

answered Feb 03 '21 at 09:52

user790082

69
1
10

Makes sense - glad it worked. – Artur Meinild Feb 03 '21 at 09:53

bash history: can't retrieve commands/commands not saved

1 Answers1