Re: confused by history

["Bart Schaefer" <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On May 13, 12:49pm, Steve Reid wrote:
} Subject: Re: confused by history
}
} I've found that when I boot my computer in the morning and start my X
} session with a few xterms, occasionally all of my zsh'es have an empty
} history. I'm don't know what's causing it but presumably it has
} something to do with the zsh'es all getting killed at shutdown.
} 
} I also get files with names like ".history.1234" congregating

The 1234 in those file names is a process ID.  Those are the lock files
zsh 3.1.6 (or thereabouts) creates to prevent multiple processes writing
to the history at the same time.  They get unlinked when writing the
history is finished.

If you're seeing those files pile up, then you're killing off your shells
with some kind of signal before they have a chance to finish shutting
down.  It sounds like you may actually be running "shutdown" after your
X server exits and then powering off the computer?  If so, you probably
want to put in a bit of a delay so that the processes have more time to
finish up before they get killed.

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com