How To Log Bash History to Syslog
jablonskis.org
How To Log Bash History to Syslog
1–10 of 14 posts
Re: How To Log Bash History to Syslog
#2What does history -a do?
Seems to write the history to disc and not produce something to pipe into logger.
How does this work?
Re: How To Log Bash History to Syslog
#3What does history -a do? Seems to write the history to disc and not produce something to pipe into logger. How does this work?
It appends the "new" history lines to a $HISTFILE by default, unless other file is specified.
Re: How To Log Bash History to Syslog
#4What does history -a do? Seems to write the history to disc and not produce something to pipe into logger. How does this work?
With bash putting a command in I've never used it, but I assume >() uses a command as though it were a writable file. So instead of history -a file writing to file, he does history -a >(logger) to write to the logger command. Seems pretty clever to me.
Re: How To Log Bash History to Syslog
#5What does history -a do? Seems to write the history to disc and not produce something to pipe into logger. How does this work?
With bash putting a command in I've never used it, but I assume >() uses a command as though it were a writable file. So instead of history -a file writing to file, he does history -a >(logger) to write to the logger command. Seems pretty clever to me.
Yup, that's what it does. Shortly speaking () in bash that creates a temporary pipe.
Re: How To Log Bash History to Syslog
#6there is also a library intended to do this.
snoopy logger, can easily be preloaded on linux to make it work without changing the existing applications
Re: How To Log Bash History to Syslog
#7i would be a bit worried about accidental passwords getting into the syslog. i have typed passwords out of habit when they were not required or before a remote system responds only to have the password end up as a bash command. i then have to go into the .bash_history file and remove them.
Re: How To Log Bash History to Syslog
#8i would be a bit worried about accidental passwords getting into the syslog. i have typed passwords out of habit when they were not required or before a remote system responds only to have the password end up as a bash command. i then have to go into the .bash_history file and remove them.
Agreed - folks who are logged in as root a lot seem to have an uncanny tendency to type all kinds of stuff that probably shouldn't show up in a log anywhere.
These tend to be the same folks who think that using "sudo" is a waste of time and serves no purpose. Not that I've ever accidentally rebooted a box, of course. :P
Re: How To Log Bash History to Syslog
#9Interesting, but is there anything that can easily process syslog on the other end? ie. split data like this out into something useful?
Re: How To Log Bash History to Syslog
#10What does history -a do? Seems to write the history to disc and not produce something to pipe into logger. How does this work?
It appends the "new" history lines to a $HISTFILE by default, unless other file is specified.
Thanks, that's what I was missing: -a can have a file.
Cool stuff and thanks to all for explaining it.
http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?history does not mention the command line argument, http://linux.die.net/man/1/bash does.