LinuxHostingSupport

Linux provides a command called “history” to view the previously executed commands on shell. By default, the “history” command display only the commands that were executed but not the date and time when they were executed.

To display the time and date of the previously executed commands, you need to set the “HISTTIMEFORMAT” variable. The variable has to be set in the users profile file so to take effect on each session.

To set the “HISTTIMEFORMAT” variable, SSH to your server and execute:

# export HISTTIMEFORMAT="[%F] [%T] "

You can also insert the above line at the end of the .bash_profile file

# vi /root/.bash_profile

Once the file is saved, open a new SSH session and execute the ‘history’ command to view the timestamp of the previously executed commands.

For example:

root@server [~]# history
 1068  [2010-08-05] [07:17:04] ps -auxf
 1069  [2010-08-05] [07:17:06] top c
 1070  [2010-08-05] [07:17:35] ll
 1071  [2010-08-05] [07:37:51] ls -la
 1072  [2010-08-05] [07:41:37] cat /root/.bash_profile
 1073  [2010-08-05] [07:41:47] cd

The commands in the above output is just an example.