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Comment by BhavdeepSethi | Hacker News Reader

Something that has been serving me well over the years:

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'

Creates a daily log file of every command entered. Searching for anything is a simple grep command.

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To preserve your existing prompt, you can append it using +=:

   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'

I do the same thing, and have a couple of commands set up to run grep over the last day, week, month, or ever in my history. I don't use my full history every day, but it's something worth keeping around.

I'm still new to bash scripting - how do you use this? Just put into ~/.profile and create a cron job for $PROMPT_COMMAND?

Just add it to your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc (source it or restart your terminal). PROMPT_COMMAND: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/x264.html

Nope, no cron. It basically takes your command, and appends (creates if it does not exist) it to a file based on the current date.

Just put it in ~/.bashrc

And run

    mkdir ~/.logs

because that's where the logs are stored.

I have this exact line too. Author unknown.

Nice!

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