Question

478

How to clear bash history completely?

rated 0 times [ 478] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 869059 / 2 Years ago, fri, september 9, 2022, 11:20:32

I want to clear all previous commands from the history of my server. I used history -c and it seems all things are cleared but when I ssh to the server, all the commands are still there.

How can I clear them permanently?

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erranbe

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4 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago anxietunnel · Accepted Answer

The file ~/.bash_history holds the history.

To clear the bash history completely on the server, open terminal and type

cat /dev/null > ~/.bash_history

Other alternate way is to link ~/.bash_history to /dev/null

However,

One annoying side-effect is that the history entries has a copy in the memory and it will flush back to the file when you log out.

To workaround this, use the following command (worked for me):

cat /dev/null > ~/.bash_history && history -c && exit