How can I sync all terminal sessions to one history file?

Question

when I open terminal session A, type some commands , and then type "history" I see the commands that I was running, but then if I open another terminal session (B) and type "history" I don't see the commands that were typed in to the session A terminal.

how can I sync the history of all terminal sessions in to one file, so when I type "history" from one terminal session I will se the commands from all the sessions?

Probably by using some sort of PROMPT_COMMAND shenanigan and writing the commands to a textfile, then tailing that textfile when you type history Turns out there was another real solution, see below — Regretful, Mar 23 '22 at 12:45
Does this answer your question? Bash history handling with multiple terminals — waltinator, Mar 23 '22 at 15:08

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 23 '22 at 12:49

1

adding

shopt -s histappend and PROMPT_COMMAND='history -a'

to your .bashrc file should make your terminals append rather than overwrite the .bash_history file.

Then the history command would probably reflect whatever was typed last regardless of terminal.

answered Mar 23 '22 at 12:49

Regretful

111

1

It doesn't seem to work for me. Bash version: 5.1.8. – FedKad Mar 23 '22 at 13:06
Indeed it does not work for me either as it stands. – Regretful Mar 24 '22 at 07:32

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 27 '22 at 10:37

1

i found something that works perfectly, added the following line to .bashrc file.

export PROMPT_COMMAND="history -a; history -c; history -r; $PROMPT_COMMAND"

answered Mar 27 '22 at 10:37

Eli Bukin

39

How can I sync all terminal sessions to one history file?

2 Answers2