When I run the history command on my ubuntu server, I get output as follows:
history ... 25 cd ~ 26 ls -a 27 vim /etc/gitconfig 28 vim ~/.gitconfig I want to view the datetime of a particular user. However when I assume them:
su otheruser export HISTTIMEFORMAT='%F %T ' history ... 25 cd ~ 26 ls -a 27 vim /etc/gitconfig 28 vim ~/.gitconfig It still doesn't show datetime. I am using zsh shell.
I believe the HISTTIMEFORMAT is for Bash shells. If you're using zsh then you could use these switches to the history command:
$ history -E 1 2.12.2013 14:19 history -E Alternatively: \history -E
$ history -i 1 2013-12-02 14:19 history -E Alternatively: \history -i
$ history -D 1 0:00 history -E 2 0:00 history -i If you do a man zshoptions or man zshbuiltins you can find out more information about these switches as well as other info related to history.
excerpt from zshbuiltins man page
Also when listing, -d prints timestamps for each command -f prints full time-date stamps in the US `MM/DD/YY hh:mm' format -E prints full time-date stamps in the European `dd.mm.yyyy hh:mm' format -i prints full time-date stamps in ISO8601 `yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm' format -t fmt prints time and date stamps in the given format; fmt is formatted with the strftime function with the zsh extensions described for the %D{string} prompt format in the section EXPANSION OF PROMPT SEQUENCES in zshmisc(1). The resulting formatted string must be no more than 256 characters or will not be printed. -D prints elapsed times; may be combined with one of the options above. You can use the following 2 methods to debug zsh when you invoke it.
Method #1
$ zsh -xv Method #2
$ zsh $ setopt XTRACE VERBOSE In either case you should see something like this when it starts up:
$ zsh -xv # # /etc/zshenv is sourced on all invocations of the # shell, unless the -f option is set. It should # contain commands to set the command search path, # plus other important environment variables. # .zshenv should not contain commands that produce # output or assume the shell is attached to a tty. # # # /etc/zshrc is sourced in interactive shells. It # should contain commands to set up aliases, functions, # options, key bindings, etc. # ## shell functions ... ... unset -f pathmunge _src_etc_profile_d +/etc/zshrc:49> unset -f pathmunge _src_etc_profile_d # Created by newuser for 4.3.10 
zsh? zsh --version. I just confirmed on Ubuntu 12.10 that the commands I gave you worked just fine. zshbuiltins man page, I discovered that I needed to use fc. What finally worked for me was fc -li. You can pass command numbers to fc, too, so fc -li -100 lists the last 100 commands in your history. \history -E, I use oh-my-zsh history -E or history -i or whatever DO NOT work for me.
zsh --version shows that zsh 4.3.6 (x86_64-suse-linux-gnu).
Then fc -li 100 works! It shows the recent 100 commands with timestamp :)
zsh 5.1.1 (x86_64-ubuntu-linux-gnu). And while I'm here: do you know how to get the help of the command fc? Neither man fc nor fc --help work oh-my-zsh the history command is add the -l flag in one of the options. see github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/blob/master/lib/… fc -lf will show a full timestamp. Note that this works only on zsh, not on bash. run-help fc. If you are using oh-my-zsh addon in zsh, history -E or history -i wont work (because it's aliased to fc -l 1).
As @juanpastas pointed out, try
\history -E
or
\history -i
or
fc -li 100
fc -li 99 means "show history from entry 99" and without a numeric arg, it show only the last 16(?) or so. Try fc -li 1 | wc -l to see how many are available.