Tracking down a Zsh history data loss bug

(michael.stapelberg.ch)

23 points | by ingve 2 hours ago

4 comments

  • mmh0000 45 minutes ago
    I have nearly a decade of zsh history. Reading that article I came to the conclusion that I may have been hit by that bug in the past but I haven’t noticed.

    Then I kept reading and the author mentions accidentally exporting HISTFILE[1] and I screamed in terror and ran to my computer as I realized a mistake I’ve been making for…ever.

    I am now both happy and sad I read this article.

    [1] https://github.com/stapelberg/configfiles/commit/32dcda0f49a...

  • aclindsa 54 minutes ago
    Nice work! I have felt like I lost zsh history before but never looked into it.
  • TZubiri 15 minutes ago
    Does zsh have that 2000 command limit by default?

    You can't expect much from a system that has those defaults, I'm all for traditions, but if I were to depend on a system for command history, it wouldn't be anything that reads a bash_history, a revolution is needed, not incremental optimizations

    P.s: what I do is set it to unlimited on both size and line count, but it's not a forensic grade audit trace, we'd need an OS, or ssh command logger, preferably one that writes to an external disk, but it can be to a root controlled file, definitely not to a user owned file.

    Security protects not only against attackers, but against bugs, a user's command history should not be deletable by user. Anything else is a wrong architecture that we are just carrying by inertia and laziness.

  • kevinbaiv 41 minutes ago
    [dead]