Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!beach.cis.ufl.edu!wlr
From: wlr@beach.cis.ufl.edu (William Ricker)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.microport
Subject: Re: YASQ: ksh in 2.4 has forgotten about history
Keywords: (yet another stupid question)
Message-ID: <19974@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>
Date: 31 Mar 89 00:49:05 GMT
References: <2560@splut.UUCP>
Sender: news@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU
Reply-To: wlr@beach.cis.ufl.edu ()
Organization: UF CIS Department
Lines: 26

In article <2560@splut.UUCP> jay@splut.UUCP (Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard) writes:
>
>After I installed 2.4, ksh forgot that it knows about history files -
>but only on root's login. ^P (I use the emacs version) just rings the
>bell, even if previous commands exist. /history exists and is writable,
>but is empty. Everything works fine on my normal user login.
>
>I've obviously forgotten something stupid; what is it?

I don't know why this happens for root, but if you put the following in
your .profile for root it works fine.
HISTFILE=/.history
export HISTFILE

Apparently, for a root user it does not use the default, ~/.history.
Note: This must be in your .profile for this to work. I assume it trys to
open the file after it reads in the .profile, if it does not have a value, 
and it seems for root, no default, it can open the file. This might prove 
to be an interesting security issue for root users. Anybody have an idea on
this.

--
Bill Ricker                                wlr@vlsi2.ee.ufl.edu
141 Turkey Creek                          wlr@beach.cis.ufl.edu
Alachua, FL 32615                        bill%ricker.UUCP@ufl.edu
(904) 462-3377                          gatech!uflorida!ricker!bill