On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 7:07 PM, Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> ...and I'm noticing that "history -a file" does not do anything if I wrote
> previously with "history -w file".  I think this is a very serious bug that
> could cause loss of an important command history.
>
> I see here that it has been fixed in bash 4.2 release candidate 2...
>
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.bash.bug/browse_thread/thread/48152c5e8c35b743?pli=1
>
> ...but I'm still on 4.0.33 on my main box.  It gets worse.  Here are two
> other boxes that I use a lot:
>
>
> How many years will pass before I get the bug fix?  With CentOS I'll
> probably die first.
>
> Mike
>

Hi Mike,

bash is pretty easy to build.  I'm sure you could crank out a personal
version and set your shell to use it instead (or exec your personel version
during the login phase) in a blink.  I'd probably just symlink to my
personal copy until the distro finally caught up and then replace the
symlink with the old binary before doing the update.  (That's me - there are
probably better ways to do it, like changing your default shell in
/etc/passwd)...

The whole point of Open Source was, in part, to facillitate collaboration
and to enable people to get bug fixes as soon as they are fixed.  If you
want to wait on a productized distro to eventually get around to it, that's
your business.  But it's not their fault for not jumping on an issue as as
quickly as you'd like.  Unless you're paying them and they've violated an
SLA you paid money for them to abide by.

wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/bash/<the_one_you_want>.tar.gz
tar -xzf bash*gz
cd bash*
./configure --prefix=$HOME/bin
make
make install

configure your system to get the new shell as you like.  Make sure you have
libreadline and its headers along with build-essentials (i.e., a working
compiler).   You might need a few other libs too but libreadline is the big
one for bash.

Also, I always do a ./configure --help and review flags for functionality I
need to flip at compile time before running the full configure.  And, of
course, it's never a bad idea to check the signatures of the files you
download before compiling them - especially if root is going to run your
shell.  :)

-Rob
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