Questions tagged [history]
The history of Unix systems and their main components. Please DO NOT USE this tag for shell-related questions; use "command-history" instead.
431
questions
2
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1
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115
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Were there ways to hide some files in old Unix?
According to Rob Pike, hiding files with a preceding dot was a mistake. So before this modification in ls behaviour (hiding files starting with a '.' by default) was made, could people hide files from ...
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-2
votes
3
answers
91
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Do we need to memorize every command of Linux OS Terminal Shell? [closed]
This is a rare question that I can ask from the experts that every time I use a command for the Linux OS Terminal Shell. Do I need to memorize every command in the Command Line Interface (CLI) of ...
- 1
0
votes
1
answer
100
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When and why was the single dash introduced for command line options?
Already in the 1980ies, ls -l did mostly what it does today. For a boolean option, in this case l, I hardly ever questioned why it is prefixed with a dash: without an indicator, ls l would mean "...
- 958
5
votes
0
answers
172
views
Why is a loop device called a "loop" device?
As far as I understand, a loop device is a regular file that acts as a block device.
It's used for various things like isolation in snap packages and installing ISOs over an existing filesystem.
But ...
- 51
3
votes
1
answer
137
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Will writing to /dev/pts allow me to source ~/.bashrc?
I have several terminal windows already open; I just made a change to ~/.bashrc, and I'd like to run source ~/.bashrc in each of the open terminals.
It seems to me that if I just
source ~/.bashrc | ...
4
votes
3
answers
457
views
How to place my own code snippets on command line à la history?
I have hundreds of tested and tried commands and snipets saved in various text files. When I need to re-use one, I find and copy/paste to the command line. Though reliable this is a clumsy method. ...
- 1,736
1
vote
1
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50
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Why doesn't my sqlite3 history work after I run a dotnet core web app?
Over the past year or two I've been using sqlite3 a lot for web development projects.
Invariably I would stumble upon a problem where suddenly, the history of commands would no longer work (when ...
- 123
4
votes
2
answers
982
views
Does any implementation of `which` output "no" when executable cannot be found?
I am reading the source code of the Maven wrapper written for the Bourne shell. I came across these lines:
if [ -z "$JAVA_HOME" ]; then
javaExecutable="$(which javac)"
if [ ...
0
votes
1
answer
112
views
Who is the original author of GNU ld?
Author information can be difficult to find for projects whose histories go back long before their git repositories. According to Wikipedia, Richard Stallman wrote gcc, and Dean Elsner wrote GNU as.
...
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3
votes
1
answer
429
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How to save the ssh commands history to a file
I'm going to allow a server administrator freelancer to access my server to do some tasks for me, so I want to save all the SSH commands that will be used in a file so I can access this file later and ...
- 133
0
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0
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51
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Since when it is possible to open multiple DE/WM in different consoles?
I remember some time ago I couldn't start X in two consoles at the same time. What I mean, if I had i3 running on tty7, I could do Ctrl+Alt+F6 to go to tty6, I could log in, but I couldn't start ...
- 1,687
0
votes
0
answers
22
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Apper does not show the installation history anymore
I think the installation history of the GUI Apper is very useful: it shows a history of package installs and removals with timestamps and I think it should also show installations made via the command-...
- 4,458
0
votes
2
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74
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Linux/Debian History: what Debian version became able to download and install packages from the Internet (with apt commands)?
For my Linux culture: what was the first version of Debian
to become able to install packages from the Internet by the mean of the apt commands?
- 2,055
0
votes
0
answers
134
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ZSH not showing/keeping history even though I have the various history settings
I have the following in my .zshrc:
# history
HISTSIZE=50000
SAVEHIST=100000
HISTFILE=~/.cache/zsh/.histfile
# plugins
plugins=(git zsh-autosuggestions zsh-syntax-highlighting)
# user configuration
...
- 403
-4
votes
1
answer
703
views
Is there a way to know who executed a command?
we are using redhat and we would to know if there is a way to show the session id or username who executes a rm command line, recently, someone from other teams delete a .jar file and me and my team ...
0
votes
1
answer
398
views
Why is debug flag in GCC abbreviated "g"?
In GCC the debug flag is "-g". I have not been able to find why "g" was chosen for this. Does anyone know?
- 107
9
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3
answers
4k
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What is the state of the art of splitting a binary file by size?
Some background you can happily skip
Twenty years ago or so, when navigating the web costed a lot, when I was a Windows-only user, and when CDs/DVDs were a large storage means, and when sharing video ...
- 1,687
-1
votes
1
answer
77
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Why no one thought of the concept of joins before the 70s? [closed]
So, let me see if I have my history right:
In 1976, the first system sold as an RDBMS was Multics Relational Data Store. I don't know if it had JOIN, but let's assume it did.
The UNIX command join ...
- 254
1
vote
2
answers
477
views
Is there a difference between file permissions and mode?
The terms "file permission" and "file mode" are often used interchangeably. However, some tools exclusively use one term or the other. Interestingly, the venerable chmod tool ...
- 1,803
0
votes
0
answers
77
views
Historical reasons for the IRC #channel prefix?
IRC channels have a prefix (most commonly #, but occasionally others like & or +). This # has become a feature of many messaging apps that came after IRC (discord, slack, etc). I'm curious if this ...
- 121
0
votes
1
answer
117
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How was a shell like when operating systems didn't had a GUI? [closed]
I understand the concepts of terminal, console, shell and their differences. I know a shell today is an interpreter that communicates with the OS kernel to perform some actions and does it through ...
- 11
0
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3
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1k
views
Why does < exist to redirect to stdin? [closed]
Question
Why do shells implement alternative means like <<<, < <(command) and < /dev/fd/* to redirect something to stdin when pipes do exist?
Example
The | way (classic pipes)
echo '...
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0
votes
1
answer
103
views
Why can GNU cal (the CLI calendar utility) send email messages?
The GNU cal utility has an option to send an email message to someone with its output:
--mail[=address]
Send Gcal’s output via mail program to the given address, e.g.:
[email protected]
If no ...
- 226
-2
votes
1
answer
219
views
Was `esac` intentionally `case` just in reverse? [duplicate]
I just realized that in shell scripting esac, the closing statement for case is just case reversed. This may be a stupid question but does esac actually mean something (ie an abbreviation) or was it ...
- 101
-1
votes
1
answer
110
views
RPG influenced names in Linux/Unix? [closed]
I have been reading about Linux and its resources recently and I have been seeing a RPG motif on a number of Linux utilities, for example Linux executables are called ELF files, the Linux manual is ...
- 19
0
votes
0
answers
221
views
Why XKB shift levels are 1 (none), 2 (Shift), 3 (AltGr), 5, and not 0, 1, 2, 4?
XKB uses the following scheme for shift levels (as can be seen in various /usr/share/X11/xkb/ files):
level_name[Level1] = "Base";
level_name[Level2] = "Shift";
level_name[Level3] ...
4
votes
1
answer
83
views
Why <sys/uio.h> called 'UIO' instead of 'VIO' [closed]
As The Open Group doc says, the <sys/uio.h> header defines the iovec structure, so why we call it Berkeley UIO.h rather than V(ector)IO.h?
- 41
2
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1
answer
609
views
What is the history of /etc/mtab and what updated it?
I updated an old linux boot disk with new utilities and shared libraries. It still had an empty /etc/mtab to start with, on the old disk the /etc/mtab was updated, on the new one /etc/mtab stayed ...
- 291
-1
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1
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267
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Has the linux kernel introduced incompatible changes to its "public API"?
I am trying to learn about Semantic Versioning, which states that the major version number should be bumped when an incompatible "public API" change occurs. My thought experiment is to try ...
- 760
0
votes
1
answer
40
views
Which software emits dates in this format between dollar signs when exporting?
Sometimes I see dates enclosed in between two $ (dollar) signs, eg. $Date: 2018/11/11 10:05:10 $ or $Date: Tuesday 06 April 2004 - 14:10:05$.
I've seen this mostly on personal homepages, most probably ...
- 103
26
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Why does `dd` use `=` in its parameters?
Why does dd use parameters with a = (if=/dev/zero) and not the more common approach of something like -i /dev/zero?
I'm just curious if someone knows the historical reason or what the pros and cons ...
- 361
2
votes
2
answers
88
views
Why is `-W` reserved for vendor extensions?
Why does the POSIX standard reserve the -W option for vendor extensions of the system utilities? I do not understand why the letter ‘W’ is used. ‘V’ (for vendor) could make more sense.
Maybe this ...
- 1,081
0
votes
2
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590
views
Did Unix have a package manager?
I've looked online but couldn't get a straight answer. Plus, there are no mentions of package managers on the Unix books that I've read.
One would imagine that someone/something needed to manage the ...
- 490
0
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0
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267
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History : For what technical reason(s) GNOME was forced to remove its icons from the desktop by default?
I'm asking a question about GNOME History.
I've red on few websites that GNOME developers where forced to remove the ability to put icons on desktop by default, for some technical reasons that I can't ...
- 2,055
21
votes
4
answers
5k
views
What is `/dev/sda0`? Is it a standard thing?
While trying to understand this other question, I encountered /dev/sda0 being mentioned.
I have some experience in Linux and I'm used to this scheme where sda, sdb, … are devices and sda1, sda2, … , ...
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1
vote
1
answer
52
views
HISTTIMEFORMAT messed up adb
I set up earlier this month HISTTIMEFORMAT cause I needed to see the time on some of the commands I previously used. However, I most likely messed something up with those commands, because every time ...
- 113
0
votes
1
answer
106
views
Why does the option --add_extra_groups in adduser contain underscore rather than hyphen word delimiters?
Premise
Most of the long-form options in the various *nix tools use hyphens as word separators.
Examples
from man tr:
--squeeze-repeats
--truncate-set1
from man sudo:
--preserve-env
--set-home
--...
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0
votes
0
answers
57
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Why is /bin merged into /usr/bin rather than the other way around? [duplicate]
I'm reading this document about the move towards merging /bin into /usr/bin:
The historical justification for a /bin, /sbin and /lib separate from /usr no longer applies today. (More on the ...
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1
vote
1
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1k
views
Why is the prompt shown at the top of the terminal, rather than at the bottom?
Why am I asking this?
As you can guess, it's mostly for curiosity. But why did the curiosity spring up in my mind?
Well, there's been a moment when I noticed that I was not happy that after I'd run ...
- 1,687
23
votes
3
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6k
views
Has Linux always separated User and Kernel space?
I was thinking back to my introduction to programming recently and remembered writing a C++ program that deliberately read and wrote to memory addresses at random. I did this to see what would happen....
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5
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1
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335
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/usr/bin/startx : has anyone ever fullfilled the urgency ? How?
I, as I can believe anyone around, have been firing /usr/bin/startx for decades experiencing nothing but 100% satisfaction for the job it serves.
If it works… don't fix it !
The author of the script ...
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6
votes
0
answers
2k
views
Why is unistd.h named the way it is?
Similar in spirit to this question about the etymology of linux commands, I'm curious about the origin of the name of unistd.h.
Does anyone know for certain what unistd.h stands for? If unistd.h was ...
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0
votes
1
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70
views
When was NSS (Name Service Switch) introduced in Solaris?
I was not able to find a date or a Solaris release number... Also, beside Ultrix's svc.conf system (mentionned in NSS's Wikipedia article), did other comparable systems exist in other Unices, before ...
- 184
2
votes
0
answers
72
views
History expansion with a string containing whitespace
I've been using unix for awhile and haven't like to use !, which, for as long as I've used unix, I've interpreted as find the last command that begins with the string following !, but it seems to not ...
- 199
0
votes
1
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65
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why no examples of video output in early computers (before desktop era) [closed]
Moved to https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/23930/ (Retrocomputing community).
Why was the serial terminal the dominant modality for interactive computer input and output up until the ...
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1
answer
773
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Origin of date command default US format
date seems to have a very odd default format in the US locale: Thu Jul 9 17:00:00 EDT 2020 using a space-padded day-of-month and putting the (24-hour!) time in the middle, between the month+day and ...
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1
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0
answers
35
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Were there any programs besides editors that relied on on the O_NDELAY file status flag (predecessor to O_NONBLOCK)
Recently, I've been researching on the O_NONBLOCK feature specified in the standard.
From what I've seen so far, the predecessor of this flag - O_NDELAY had existed all the way back to UNIX System III....
- 620
0
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1
answer
66
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Single Unix Specification version 4 (Issue 7) moved bunch of Real-Time APIs to Base, What Next?
While reading the standard, I noticed that bunch of APIs were,
Introduced in Issue 5 for alignment with POSIX realtime APIs,
Marked for option group membership in Issue 6, and
Moved to Base in ...
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16
votes
2
answers
4k
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What is the bsdutils package on Debian? What is a "BSD-style Unix system"?
I stumbled upon the bsdutils package in Debian. The description says:
This package contains the bare minimum of BSD utilities needed for a Debian system: logger, renice, script, scriptlive, ...
- 1,636
0
votes
1
answer
68
views
Story about a complex solution vs letting it fail [closed]
I'm looking for a reference. It's a story about a team that solved a problem in a pretty complex way and the other simply let it fail, than the client would crash (or something like that) and it ...
- 127