I found the solution in your mailing list after I did a search. https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/02/msg00960.html
I learned history saves until the user logs out, and if I want to append info prematurely, do "history -a" Thank you On Friday, July 25th, 2025 at 2:52 PM, Veronica Cisneros <spam.veron...@proton.me> wrote: > Utterly confused by the timestamp of the last item of command history vs. the > last modified time of .bash_history > > I configured all users with HISTTIMEFORMAT="%Y%m%dT%H%M%S%z " > > Below I quote anonymized output from bash to commands date, history 12, and > alias lis (i.e., "ls -Zilas") > > someUser:~$ date > Wed Jul 23 07:12:56 PM PDT 2025 > someUser:~$ history 12 > 1262 20250723T184953-0700 journalctl | grep -F "Jul 23" | grep DBus > 1263 20250723T185529-0700 tail /home/anotherUser/.bash_history > 1264 20250723T185726-0700 lis /home/anotherUser/.* > 1265 20250723T190000-0700 vim /etc/bash.bashrc > 1266 20250723T190115-0700 whereis history > 1267 20250723T190138-0700 man history > 1268 20250723T190229-0700 man -K bash > 1269 20250723T191113-0700 journalctl | grep "Jul 23" | grep "DBus" > 1270 20250723T191221-0700 history 10 > 1271 20250723T191240-0700 lis .bash* > 1272 20250723T191256-0700 date > 1273 20250723T191303-0700 history 12 > someUser:~$ lis .bash* > 45408 4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root ? 46 Jul 9 19:21 .bash_aliases > 45551 44 -rw------- 1 root root ? 43252 Jul 23 19:06 .bash_history > 1213 4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root ? 571 Apr 10 2021 .bashrc > > NOTICE (time stamp in 24hr format 19:12:56) > someUser:~$ date > Wed Jul 23 07:12:56 PM PDT 2025 > > NOTICE last item of history 12 > 20250723T191303-0700 history 12 > > NOTICE > the last modified time .bash_history file is 20250723T1906 > > I expected .bash_history file to be synced to time of last issued command > (i.e. 20250723T191303-0700) > > WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE timestamp of the history command entries > and the last modified time of bash_history file for the given user? > > Is this working as it should? > Thanx
