confused by history

confused by history

[Eric Smith]

I like lots of history as in  ... what was that command I typed two years ago
mmm... ^-R and its back ;)

Problem is that I cannot seem to grow my history file - as you can see by
the grep -i from my zshrc I am quite ambitous.  I often toggle setting
and go wc -l $HISTFILE but get no more that 500 or up to 1000 if lucky -
what could be keeping the file small?

grep -i /etc/zshrc:


set INC_APPEND_HISTORY 
set SHARE_HISTORY 
export HISTFILE=~/.zsh_history
export HISTSIZE=10000
export HISTFILESIZE=10000
export SAVEHIST=10000
setopt
      append_history \
		bang_hist \
		hist_allow_clobber \
		hist_expire_dups_first \
		hist_ignore_all_dups \
      histignoredups \
		inc_append_history \
      hist_ignore_dups \
      extendedhistory 
       #histverify
       #setopt hist_ignore_dups \
       #extendedhistory \
       #histignoredups \
       #histverify 

-- 
Eric Smith

Re: confused by history

[Steve Reid]

On Fri, May 12, 2000 at 08:58:50PM +0200, Eric Smith wrote:
> Problem is that I cannot seem to grow my history file - as you can see by
> the grep -i from my zshrc I am quite ambitous.  I often toggle setting
> and go wc -l $HISTFILE but get no more that 500 or up to 1000 if lucky -
> what could be keeping the file small?

I've found that when I boot my computer in the morning and start my X
session with a few xterms, occasionally all of my zsh'es have an empty
history. I'm don't know what's causing it but presumably it has
something to do with the zsh'es all getting killed at shutdown. Maybe
this is the problem you're seeing.

I also get files with names like ".history.1234" congregating in my home
directory. They are all either empty or just contain two bytes: "\0\n".
Kind of annoying.

ZSH_VERSION=3.1.6-dev-19
OSTYPE=freebsd3.2

History stuff from my rc file:

HISTSIZE=800
SAVEHIST=500
HISTFILE=~/.history
setopt HIST_EXPIRE_DUPS_FIRST
setopt HIST_IGNORE_DUPS
setopt HIST_IGNORE_SPACE
setopt HIST_NO_STORE
setopt HIST_SAVE_NO_DUPS
setopt HIST_REDUCE_BLANKS
setopt SHARE_HISTORY

Re: confused by history

[Bart Schaefer]

On May 12,  8:58pm, Eric Smith wrote:
} Subject: confused by history
}
} Problem is that I cannot seem to grow my history file - as you can see by
} the grep -i from my zshrc I am quite ambitous.  I often toggle setting

What do you mean by "toggle setting" here?

} and go wc -l $HISTFILE but get no more that 500 or up to 1000 if lucky -
} what could be keeping the file small?
} 
} grep -i /etc/zshrc:

Is all this stuff really in /etc/zshrc?  Why isn't it in ~/.zshrc instead?
What IS in ~/.zshrc?  Anything in ~/.zshrc is run after /etc/zshrc, so if
you have e.g. HISTSIZE=500 there, the setting in /etc/zshrc won't matter.
What about /etc/zlogin and ~/.zlogin, which are run even later?

Have you looked at the output of `print $HISTSIZE $SAVEHIST' to see whether
the variables are really set to what you expect?

} set INC_APPEND_HISTORY 
} set SHARE_HISTORY 

Those should be setopt, not set, but the first one gets a setopt below.

} export HISTFILE=~/.zsh_history
} export HISTSIZE=10000
} export HISTFILESIZE=10000

There's no such thing as HISTFILESIZE, at least in zsh.  Bash, maybe?
Yeah, that seems to be it.  How'd that sneak into /etc/zshrc?

} export SAVEHIST=10000
} setopt
}       append_history \
} 		bang_hist \
} 		hist_allow_clobber \
} 		hist_expire_dups_first \
} 		hist_ignore_all_dups \
}       histignoredups \
} 		inc_append_history \
}       hist_ignore_dups \
}       extendedhistory 

The doc for inc_append_history says:

INC_APPEND_HISTORY
     This options works like APPEND_HISTORY except that new history
     lines are added to the $HISTFILE incrementally (as soon as they are
     entered), rather than waiting until the shell is killed.  The file
     is periodically trimmed to the number of lines specified by
     $SAVEHIST, but can exceed this value between trimmings.

So my guess is that somewhere you have a SAVEHIST=500 which is causing
inc_append history to periodically trim the file.  If you happen to look
at it between trimmings, it'll be bigger, hence "up to 1000 if lucky."

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com

Re: confused by history

[Bart Schaefer]

On May 13, 12:49pm, Steve Reid wrote:
} Subject: Re: confused by history
}
} I've found that when I boot my computer in the morning and start my X
} session with a few xterms, occasionally all of my zsh'es have an empty
} history. I'm don't know what's causing it but presumably it has
} something to do with the zsh'es all getting killed at shutdown.
} 
} I also get files with names like ".history.1234" congregating

The 1234 in those file names is a process ID.  Those are the lock files
zsh 3.1.6 (or thereabouts) creates to prevent multiple processes writing
to the history at the same time.  They get unlinked when writing the
history is finished.

If you're seeing those files pile up, then you're killing off your shells
with some kind of signal before they have a chance to finish shutting
down.  It sounds like you may actually be running "shutdown" after your
X server exits and then powering off the computer?  If so, you probably
want to put in a bit of a delay so that the processes have more time to
finish up before they get killed.

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com