New to Linux, Konsole

bean7

Hello,
Is it normal for there to be entries in the terminal's history that I didn't type myself?
I'm the only user, and I have just these 3 lines, which wasn't me.
1 cd /home/bean/Videos
2 clear
3 cd /
Just seems strange, thanks.

Staudey

bean7 Kinda seems like someone wanted to see if you had any naughty videos stored. Spouse, parents?
Or alternatively, are you sure you didn't at some point try out some terminal commands and simply forgot about it?

brent

just looked back at my last 100 entries and I remember them all, which is surprising for different reasons....
I surfed 10 minutes straight about your strange predicament and found nothing. I am getting better; search engines are getting worse.
An app over-wrote in there...or a third party software...I mean like a 'save as' or similar...is every single entry in history authored by the user/admin? (rhetorical)

WetGeek

Staudey Kinda seems like someone wanted to see if you had any naughty videos stored. Spouse, parents?

Or maybe someone is looking for some attention?

brent

WetGeek mmm...it was a Halloween post....maybe we were trolled🙂

WetGeek

brent maybe we were trolled

Ya think?

brent

WetGeek
😉

bean7

This really happened ;\

Thanks, brent, for looking into it. I couldn't find anything about it myself.

It definitely wasn't me because there's a space in front of every line. I didn't think much of it so I didn't mention it, but I found you put a space to prevent the command from being saved, though they saved anyhow. It looks fishy, but hoping it was just generated by an app or something.

I haven't installed much, just these from the Software Center:
MuseScore
Palapeli
SimpleScreenRecorder

Thanks all for your input.

brent

stalebrim apps don't and I was trying to find the existence of an app that did but I could not.
Staudey from limited reading I've learned that Time and Date stamps can be affixed to history output...could that be made retroactive after the fact? would clear up everything.
bean7 heck, if you are adamant it was absolutely not you...a simple screen recorder video wouldn't just be coincidentally in /Videos, would it? I think I am reckless to think this was done remotely....a la Knock Knock Neo....you would have to have had permission granted for an outside party somehow. Install a firewall.
You never answered/addressed Staudey 's speculation---are there people who are not you that use your computer?

stalebrim

Apps usually don't write to .bash_history.

Staudey

My money still is on either you doing that yourself and forgetting about it, or, less likely, someone with physical access to your computer doing a little snooping.

How are you looking at the command history? Are you sure there are spaces in front? If so, that really points to someone in your environment (with Linux knowledge) trying to snoop around while avoiding detection.

Btw, we don't exclude commands with a space in front from the command history by default

See here for our HISTIGNORE config: https://dev.getsol.us/source/bash/browse/master/files/profile/50-history.sh$4

& means ignore duplicates
[bf]g matches bg and fg
exit matches, well, the exit command

To ignore commands with a space in front you'd have to add [ ]* to the HISTIGNORE

stalebrim

brent It still sounds strange though. Solus, as far as I know, doesn't listen to any ports on stock and the OP hasn't installed anything that would allow a remote connection to be made (a VNC, for example).

The only way for a peace of mind would of course be reinstalling the system and enabling a firewall (gufw) right after.

bean7

stalebrim, I'd think so, too; commands would just go through the terminal. I don't suppose an app or the OS would automatically do that either?

Staudy, I actually didn't know the "clear" command until I looked it up because of this. The spaces are there before each line in .bash_history.

Seems my concern wasn't just me being silly. Whatever it is, I'm the only one using this computer, so either something benign built in or, otherwise, electronic ...

I'll keep looking back here a bit before reinstalling.
I appreciate your help.

stalebrim

bean7 To install a firewall, you can do
sudo eopkg it gufw
sudo ufw enable
reboot

Commands lsof -i -P -n or ss -tulpn can be used to monitor active connections.

brent

bean7 not baked into solus that is for sure...introduced in after install more likely.
I would trust the repo apps. Bring in any 3rd party software yourself? proprietary? flat or snap or appimage? or compile?
that's about the end of my brain on this mystery. my money is on Smith.

bean7

brent, I did consider it correlated to the SimpleScreenRecorder. The bash history was created the day I installed that program. Maybe it happened while I was setting up the program, but I couldn't reproduce it. I tried reinstalling it and doing a screen capture as I did before, and also tried with a new user account, but I never saw the bash history being affected.

I don't recall installing anything outside of the repo, just the apps I mentioned and the Solus ISO from this website, which verified.

brent and stalebrim, I'll try out that firewall, thank you.

brent, thanks for trying. Maybe I did something stupid that I can't remember, but I'm about at my end too. I'm not trolling lol

bean7

I found it.

It was the Dolphin terminal logging my folder changes.
Dolphin > Tools > Focus Terminal Panel

I have no recollection of this as I was playing with the OS. Anyway, that's where the strange cd entries were from.

Thanks all.

Staudey

bean7 Interesting. I guess the Dolphin Terminal inserts spaces in front in an effort to not pollute the bash history? I'd have to check. In any case it's ineffective on Solus (and in this case confusing 😆)

Well, glad to see you figured it out! Once again it was the simplest explanation that was the correct one, with some additional details sprinkled in to make it intriguing.

@brent every terminal will write to bash history, as long as it's using bash as the shell (I think most terminals out there will respect your shell preference; e.g. bash as default on Solus)

brent

Dolphin writes history entries? Dolphin File Manager and Dolphin Terminal two different things or same beast? Congrats on solving the riddle. I have more questions now that its solved though🙂

bean7

Thanks Brent. I don't know, seems like one is controlling the other to keep it updated to itself. History appears to occur through the terminal's usual course I suppose.

brent

Staudey every terminal will write to bash history, as long as it's using bash as the shell

makes sense now, thank you

bean7

Staudey I also thought it might put in the spaces for that reason. I've experienced Linux to be rather mindfully done, ineffective here but well-meant anyhow. I'm glad I can keep using Solus without any worries now. I've liked this OS best so far, since Windows XP 😃