Typically when you type history from command line, it displays the command# and the command. For auditing purpose, it may be beneficial to display the timestamp along with the command as shown below.
# export HISTTIMEFORMAT=’%F %T ‘
# history | more
1 2008-08-05 19:02:39 service network restart
2 2008-08-05 19:02:39 exit
3 2008-08-05 19:02:39 id
4 2008-08-05 19:02:39 cat /etc/redhat-release
Note: You can also setup the following alias to view the recent history commands.
alias h1='history 10' alias h2='history 20' alias h3='history 30'
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you mean
# export HISTTIMEFORMAT=’%F %T ‘
Nice, i was looking on how to add AM/PM to the timestamp. While searching i stumbled upon this.. “HISTTIMEFORMAT takes format string of strftime. Check out the strftime manual to choose and construct the timestamp that suit your taste.” on another site. Here is a list of character’s (%a, %A, %b, %B, %c, %C etc.) and what they can do to further modify your HISTTIMEFORMAT:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/online/pages/man3/strftime.3.html
here are some more examples like the ones shown above:
export HISTTIMEFORMAT=”%a %h %d – %r ”
will display:
457 Sat Sep 22 – 07:37:28 PM asdsa
458 Sat Sep 22 – 07:37:29 PM history
export HISTTIMEFORMAT=”%A %h %d – %r ”
will display:
459 Saturday Sep 22 – 07:39:53 PM sdfsad
460 Saturday Sep 22 – 07:39:54 PM history
export HISTTIMEFORMAT=”%A %B %d – %r ”
will display:
459 Saturday September 22 – 07:39:53 PM sdfsad
460 Saturday September 22 – 07:39:54 PM history
Thanks all of you it is very good note…
(1) Useful examples which are not found elsewhere.
(2) Maybe you know how to make these date/time history entries appear in “human readable” format in the .bash_history file ??? I have not found the answer to question anywhere !
The command is not working properly. It is displaying the date and time of todays for all the commands where as I ran the some command three before.
How come it is displaying the today date 🙁
@Krisha –
1) add export HISTTIMEFORMAT=’%F %T ‘ to the end of the /etc/bashrc file.
2) Next, exit your shell and open a new one.
3) type something like “echo hi”
4) exit the shell
5) open a new shell
6) tail -n 500 ~/.bash_history
You’ll notice that some of the commands in the history file now have a line #(bunch of numbers) before them… these are there because the environment variable HISTTIMEFORMAT is now set.. before it was not set so those commands get displayed with the current date/time because really.. they have no date/time