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In my .bash_profile I have script -a -t 0 session.log which automatically records all terminal input/output into the session.log file. I know this command comes with an optional flag to record the time differences in another file but I was wondering if there was another way to prefix the session.log lines with a timestamp.

Can I pipe the writes to a different shell function before writing it to session.log? Something like this script -a >(add_timestamps.sh >> session.log) (does not work)

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  • Is there anything special in the format about these script files, or could this question be reworded to be about prepending timestamps to files in general?
    – Anko
    Commented Apr 21, 2016 at 0:38
  • ideally I would like the timestamp to be as automated and simple as possible so i'm trying to avoid tailing the file and then writing to a new one.
    – Luiz
    Commented Apr 21, 2016 at 2:10

4 Answers 4

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2

There is probably only one thing missing from your example, the option -f to flush the write each time. 

script -f >(while read;do date;echo "$REPLY";done >>session.log)
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  • Wow you're right... I was closer than I realized.. for osx however you have to do script -t 0 to flush each time. I also ended up going with this function to add the date... serverfault.com/a/310104
    – Luiz
    Commented Apr 21, 2016 at 21:49
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this might be a partial solution, depending on your needs: if you include \d \D{} in your PS1 string, each command prompt will include the date and time. that will give you the time at which the previous command finished. in the simplest case, do

    PS1='\d \D{} $ '

do that after invoking script (or in your .bashrc or whatever) and you will get a session.log like this:

    Wed Apr 20 08:23:55 PM $ date
    Wed Apr 20 20:23:57 EDT 2016
    Wed Apr 20 08:23:57 PM $ exit
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  • This is pretty slick but I don't want to pollute the Prompt.
    – Luiz
    Commented Apr 21, 2016 at 2:09
1

Sounds like ts, from moreutils.

Lots of distros have it packaged. It just prepends timestamps to lines of input.

Example use:

$ while true; do sleep 1; echo hi; done | ts %s
1461198715 hi
1461198716 hi
1461198717 hi
1461198718 hi
[ ... ]
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  • The code needs to be portable and not just for local use so I can't assume everyone will have it installed
    – Luiz
    Commented Apr 21, 2016 at 2:09
0

By using awk as the log output destination, you can add a timestamp to the beginning of each line.

script -fq >(awk '{print strftime("%F %T ") $0}{fflush() }'>> session.log)

Example)

[root@BS-PUB-CENT7-01 ~]# LANG=C script -fq >(awk '{print strftime("%F %T ") $0}{fflush() }'>>
session.log)
[root@BS-PUB-CENT7-01 ~]# pwd
/root
[root@BS-PUB-CENT7-01 ~]#
[root@BS-PUB-CENT7-01 ~]# echo aaa
aaa
[root@BS-PUB-CENT7-01 ~]#
[root@BS-PUB-CENT7-01 ~]# exit
exit
[root@BS-PUB-CENT7-01 ~]#
[root@BS-PUB-CENT7-01 ~]# cat session.log
2017-05-26 01:12:11 Script started on Fri May 26 01:12:11 2017
2017-05-26 01:12:13 [root@BS-PUB-CENT7-01 ~]# pwd
2017-05-26 01:12:13 /root
2017-05-26 01:12:14 [root@BS-PUB-CENT7-01 ~]#
2017-05-26 01:12:16 [root@BS-PUB-CENT7-01 ~]# echo aaa
2017-05-26 01:12:16 aaa
2017-05-26 01:12:16 [root@BS-PUB-CENT7-01 ~]#
2017-05-26 01:12:17 [root@BS-PUB-CENT7-01 ~]# exit
2017-05-26 01:12:17 exit
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2
  • 1
    Please add some explanation if possible.
    – phk
    Commented May 23, 2017 at 19:06
  • I'm sorry, I was not good at English...
    – Naofumi Uesugi
    Commented May 26, 2017 at 1:15

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