YASQ: ksh in 2.4 has forgotten about history

[William Ricker]

In article <2560 at splut.UUCP> jay at splut.UUCP (Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard) writes:
>
>After I installed 2.4, ksh forgot that it knows about history files -
>but only on root's login. ^P (I use the emacs version) just rings the
>bell, even if previous commands exist. /history exists and is writable,
>but is empty. Everything works fine on my normal user login.
>
>I've obviously forgotten something stupid; what is it?

I don't know why this happens for root, but if you put the following in
your .profile for root it works fine.
HISTFILE=/.history
export HISTFILE

Apparently, for a root user it does not use the default, ~/.history.
Note: This must be in your .profile for this to work. I assume it trys to
open the file after it reads in the .profile, if it does not have a value, 
and it seems for root, no default, it can open the file. This might prove 
to be an interesting security issue for root users. Anybody have an idea on
this.

--
Bill Ricker                                wlr at vlsi2.ee.ufl.edu
141 Turkey Creek                          wlr at beach.cis.ufl.edu
Alachua, FL 32615                        bill%ricker.UUCP at ufl.edu
(904) 462-3377                          gatech!uflorida!ricker!bill