I can’t believe I didn’t know about this command beforehand. When I first got into self-hosting and homelabbing, one of the app ideas I had that would help me with internal documentation is a terminal program that saves your input and output to a file for you to review later and extract the key commands you used. I also had the bonus idea that you could add comments as you were writing out commands.

+

Little did I know at the time that comments from the CLI were already possible! I’ve already begun using comments which has been helpful if I need to look back at my zsh_history file. Here’s an example of a command I would use with my docker services.

+
docker logs {container_name} --since 5m ;: The container is failing 5 minutes after startup.
+
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + + +

You can write comments in bash and powershell as well!

+
    +
  • Powershell: rem
    • +
  • ZSH: ;:
    • +
  • Bash: #
    • +
+
+ +

Turns out, I don’t need a fancy app to log the input/output of a terminal session! It exists in most unix based systems already and the command is simply this: script. That’s it!

+

Unlike .zsh_history or .bash_history which only saves the commands you input into the terminal, script will save both your commands and it’s output. Why didn’t I know about this before I started setting up my homelab?!

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The next time I want to setup a new service or debug something on a server, I will now make sure I start my session with script {date}-{service_name}.txt and then start writing out commands. As long as I can remember to write my inline comments during the session, looking back and trying to figure out what I was thinking at the time should be a breeze! I can dump these files into my internal wiki as placeholders. Then, ideally, I’ll remove the commands that lead me down a dead end, clean up and expand comments, and easily keep my wiki growing. Ideally being the key word here… I’ll take a dump of history files for the time being.

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Either way, I will literally have the output of my brain when doing CLI work in a file. Incredible.

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Here’s a quick overview about script, taken from man script.

+
               SCRIPT(1)
+
+NAME
+     script – make typescript of terminal session
+
+SYNOPSIS
+     script [-aeFkqr] [-t time] [file [command ...]]
+     script -p [-deq] [-T fmt] [file]
+
+DESCRIPTION
+     The script utility makes a typescript of everything printed on your terminal.  It is useful for students who need a hardcopy record of an interactive session as proof of an assignment, as the typescript file can be
+     printed out later with lpr(1).
+
+     If the argument file is given, script saves all dialogue in file.  If no file name is given, the typescript is saved in the file typescript.
+
+     If the argument command is given, script will run the specified command with an optional argument vector instead of an interactive shell.
+
+ + +