Bash History is not Working

Question

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 14.04 Server Edition. The first thing I noticed is that my bash history seems to be broken. When I press the up arrow I should be able to view my recent commands, however I simply get a ^[[A character instead. Strangely, bash history works perfectly when I am logged in as root, but it does not work when I am logged in as an user.

Are you sure you are in a bash shell (not, for example, dash)? See Arrow keys, tab-complete not working — steeldriver, Mar 19 '15 at 03:08
I think you are right, weird that it is not the default... thanks for your help! — Qwintus, Mar 19 '15 at 03:11
@Qwintus depends on how you add your user. I think useradd uses sh as the default, and adduser uses bash as the default. — muru, Mar 19 '15 at 05:26

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 19 '15 at 15:53

1

It might be that the ~/.bash_history file is owned by root. If this is the case use chown as root to give the ownership to yourself.

sudo chown YourUserName ~/.bash_history

edited Mar 19 '15 at 15:53

αғsнιη

35,660

answered Mar 19 '15 at 15:50

Ghazanfar

216

Bash History is not Working

1 Answers1