3 ms·

A very valid use-case not mentioned in the article is to save all your personal terminal interactions to a database so you can search it in the future. Your ter

A very valid use-case not mentioned in the article is to save all your personal terminal interactions to a database so you can search it in the future. Your terminal's input (and output) value per byte is enormous so really everyone should be saving it all. I'll be horsing around with this tonight -- I hope ts sshing to my local computer will just work so I can get local recording as well without a separate mechanism.

chrisshroba 3y ago
I've thought about this too - if you use tmux, you can use `tmux capture-pane` to grab all the output and scrollback in the current window.
deleted 3y ago
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wkat4242 3y ago
The value is enormous but the security sensitivity is too, so it's important to only store it in secure places.
- wahern 3y ago
  And on a company laptop with automagic backups to the cloud of your home directory, what's secure? At a previous company I disabled persistent shell history, and lost count of the number of times this prevented a sensitive password or key from being added to the treasure trove of secrets that are backup archives. (The backup app nominally supported exclusions, but 1) I don't trust the correctness of corporate bloatware, and more importantly 2) I don't trust that IT or an update wouldn't reset those exclusions.) Now, shell sessions from a bastion host scream (hopefully!) security sensitive to IT. Moreover, at that point you shouldn't be entering any passwords or keys; one should trust least the integrity of application servers and similar end nodes. But dumps from company laptop home directories where 99% is crap from sales and management... no way that is going to be treated with proper care, no matter how much customer PII it might contain.
  - catkitcourt 3y ago
    The real problem here is you are typing those "sensitive password or key" into termianl. Instead of type it directly, Use `read password` and `mysql -p$password` is the right way. Additionally, most programs can use environment variables directly, so you can even avoid showing them in the command line arguments. If you entered something in terminal directly, I won't call it sensitive.
  - hamandcheese 3y ago
    In this day an age, are workstation backups really necessary? I can't think of anything important I do on my work machine that would need it. Maybe a days worth of code edits that haven't been pushed to GitHub.
    - snapplebobapple 3y ago
      If its windows and you use weird certs for external interaction like most power pools do, its pretty important, especially thw solutions that spin up a vm in the cloud foe you quickly.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      For me personally yes absolutely. But I'm not much into the whole cloud movement for privacy reasons.
  - XorNot 3y ago
    On a company laptop this all sounds like the company's problem, not mine.
yellow_lead 3y ago
This project was mentioned recently here - it does this locally, saving to sqlite. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35839470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35839470 https://github.com/ellie/atuin https://github.com/ellie/atuin
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  And it looked amazing, until another user pointed out that if you install it, whitespace-prefixed commands will start being saved in your bash history, and they refuse to document this behaviour
  - yellow_lead 3y ago
    Ooh, didn't see that.
  - jpeeler 3y ago
    Does mcfly also have this behavior? https://github.com/cantino/mcfly https://github.com/cantino/mcfly
    - jpeeler 3y ago
      Answering my own question, McFly does not have record whitespace prefixed commands.

chrisshroba 3y ago

I've thought about this too - if you use tmux, you can use `tmux capture-pane` to grab all the output and scrollback in the current window.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

wkat4242 3y ago

The value is enormous but the security sensitivity is too, so it's important to only store it in secure places.

wahern 3y ago
And on a company laptop with automagic backups to the cloud of your home directory, what's secure? At a previous company I disabled persistent shell history, and lost count of the number of times this prevented a sensitive password or key from being added to the treasure trove of secrets that are backup archives. (The backup app nominally supported exclusions, but 1) I don't trust the correctness of corporate bloatware, and more importantly 2) I don't trust that IT or an update wouldn't reset those exclusions.) Now, shell sessions from a bastion host scream (hopefully!) security sensitive to IT. Moreover, at that point you shouldn't be entering any passwords or keys; one should trust least the integrity of application servers and similar end nodes. But dumps from company laptop home directories where 99% is crap from sales and management... no way that is going to be treated with proper care, no matter how much customer PII it might contain.
- catkitcourt 3y ago
  The real problem here is you are typing those "sensitive password or key" into termianl. Instead of type it directly, Use `read password` and `mysql -p$password` is the right way. Additionally, most programs can use environment variables directly, so you can even avoid showing them in the command line arguments. If you entered something in terminal directly, I won't call it sensitive.
- hamandcheese 3y ago
  In this day an age, are workstation backups really necessary? I can't think of anything important I do on my work machine that would need it. Maybe a days worth of code edits that haven't been pushed to GitHub.
  - snapplebobapple 3y ago
    If its windows and you use weird certs for external interaction like most power pools do, its pretty important, especially thw solutions that spin up a vm in the cloud foe you quickly.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    For me personally yes absolutely. But I'm not much into the whole cloud movement for privacy reasons.
- XorNot 3y ago
  On a company laptop this all sounds like the company's problem, not mine.

yellow_lead 3y ago

This project was mentioned recently here - it does this locally, saving to sqlite. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35839470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35839470 https://github.com/ellie/atuin https://github.com/ellie/atuin

pcthrowaway 3y ago
And it looked amazing, until another user pointed out that if you install it, whitespace-prefixed commands will start being saved in your bash history, and they refuse to document this behaviour
- yellow_lead 3y ago
  Ooh, didn't see that.
- jpeeler 3y ago
  Does mcfly also have this behavior? https://github.com/cantino/mcfly https://github.com/cantino/mcfly
  - jpeeler 3y ago
    Answering my own question, McFly does not have record whitespace prefixed commands.