How To Add Date and Time To Bash History

As Linux users and engineers, we often have to look back in our bash history to figure out exactly where things went wrong. The worst is when you execute the `history` command and all you get is a list of the commands you ran without the date/time of the command execution included. 


Thankfully, there's an easy solution. Simply run the following command which defines the `HISTTIMEFORMAT` environment variable and exports that environment variable whenever you login/establish a new shell. 

```

echo 'export HISTTIMEFORMAT="%d/%m/%y %T "' >> ~/.bash_profile

```

Where:

%d – Day

%m – Month

%y – Year

%T – Time

 

After executing the command, run `source ~/.bash_profile` or close your bash shell and open a new one.

  • 0 Users Found This Useful
Was this answer helpful?

Related Articles

Expand your bash history to 2500

Expand your .bash_history to 2500 I do alot of testing and alot of work on Centos servers. I...

OpenVPN Tutorial For Debian/Ubuntu on OpenVZ

What is OpenVPN?OpenVPN is a reliable and well tested VPN solution that is able to run over a...

How do I SSH into my VPS? (OS X/Terminal)

If you are on a Mac, SSH-ing into your VPS is very simple. Simply launch "Terminal" by going to...

How do I SSH into my VPS? (Windows/Putty)

This article will teach you how to access your server via SSH using the PuTTY client on Windows....

How to extract a tar.gz file

So you have went to that website and downloaded the latest version of your files. But they are in...