history not saved if a command begins with a space

[Nicolò Chieffo]

Binary package hint: bash

I'm running feisty (up to date) and I noticed that if I put a space before the command, it is not saved in the history:
it is not in .bash_histiry and it is not shown when using the up arrow.

I think this bug is here since an update that enabled the mouse wheel in applications like vim

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

Please verify your environment variables; from the man page for bash:

 HISTCONTROL
              A colon-separated list of values controlling how commands are saved on the history list. If the list
              of values includes ignorespace, lines which begin with a space character are not saved in the history
              list. A value of ignoredups causes lines matching the previous history entry to not be saved. A
              value of ignoreboth is shorthand for ignorespace and ignoredups. A value of erasedups causes all
              previous lines matching the current line to be removed from the history list before that line is
              saved. Any value not in the above list is ignored. If HISTCONTROL is unset, or does not include a
              valid value, all lines read by the shell parser are saved on the history list, subject to the value
              of HISTIGNORE. The second and subsequent lines of a multi-line compound command are not tested, and
              are added to the history regardless of the value of HISTCONTROL.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

HISTCONTROL: "ignoreboth"
HISTIGNORE is empty

is this the default now?

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

I am not sure, Nicolò, and will try to find out. Did you do a fresh install on this feisty? Or was it an upgrade?

Also -- where is HISTCONTROL being set: your own ~/.bashrc, or in /etc/bash.bashrc?

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

Hum. Would you have the sysprofile package installed?

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

I've done a fresh feisty install lots of time ago... and now I'm dist upgrading

the only HISTCONTROL that I see is under /etc/skel/.bashrc (and of
course in my ~/.bashrc)

# don't put duplicate lines in the history. See bash(1) for more options
export HISTCONTROL=ignoredups
# ... and ignore same sucessive entries.
export HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth

(there is no sense to export a variable and overwrite it immediately after...)

I don't have the package "sysprofile" but if I'm not sure some time
ago I installed (and removed) oprofile

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

oprofile is used for profiling program execution, so I do not think this would be it.

bash has this distributed in /etc/skel/.bashrc, which is used to populate ~/.bashrc for a newly-created user. So... this is most certainly where it came from.

And... yes, bash_3.2-0ubuntu7.diff.gz does list the following:

+bash (3.2-0ubuntu1) feisty; urgency=low
+
+ * New upstream version.
(...)
+ * Set HISTCONTROL to ignoreboth. Ubuntu #66539.

So 3.2-0ubuntu7 (current bash) has it there as ignoreboth; actually, the patch seems to add both entries.

A look at bug 66539 indicates that since dapper bash has come with HISTCONTROL=ignoredups, so this is not actually new (I myself have no idea, since I moved to Ubuntu on Feisty). On the other hand, any new user created after installing 3.2-0ubuntu7 would have it set.

Nicolò, I tend to "this is not a bug". Do you agree?

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

this is not a bug because someone has decided to switch from
ignoredups to ignoreboth.
I don't really understand why lines starting with a space must be
ignored... I don't know what "mc" is (from the bug link you gave me),
but I surely know that this behaviour is not like it used to be in the
previous versions

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

mc is midnight commander.

Yes, it is certainly not like what it was.

Anyways... not a bug.

[andrewm (andrew-mcguigan)]

How about a bug that asks to change the default back to "ignoredups"? I've asked around the office and most folks with not expect commands beginning with a space to be ignored by default.

[qji (qji)]

I also hate this behavior. :( I don't care mc, I just expect bash stores my command history...