[debian-mysql] Bug#799296: Bug#799296: mysql-client-5.6: upgrading from 5.5 to 5.6 with client running lost client command history

[Clint Byrum]

Excerpts from The Wanderer's message of 2015-09-17 09:18:49 -0700:
> Package: mysql-client-5.6
> Version: 5.6.25-4
> Severity: minor
> 
> Dear Maintainer,
> 
> I habitually have an instance of mysql-client running, connected to a
> particular database, with the somewhat-complex commands which I
> regularly use with that database present in the mysql command history.
> 
> When I have upgraded mysql-client in the past, all I have needed to do
> is to exit the old client instance after the upgrade and re-launch with
> the new client, and everything has been seamless. In particular, the
> command history from the previous client has still been present.
> 
> When I upgraded to 5.6, exited the 5.5 client, and re-launched with the
> 5.6 client, I discovered that my command history was empty.
> Newly-entered commands made it into the new history just fine, but all
> of the old ones were gone, apparently beyond recovery.
> 
> I expected that instead, my command history would be retained, as has
> happened on every previous upgrade in what is substantially the same
> scenario.
> 
> In this particular case, I was able to recover the main important
> commands from where they were displayed in the terminal from the recent
> 5.5 session, but it is pure good fortune that all of the main important
> commands had been used recently enough to still be visible in the
> terminal's backscroll. If any had not been, I would be stuck with
> reconstructing them from scratch.
> 

Sorry that you had this happen. I wonder if the important commands were
mysql grants for users? 5.6.8 added some ignoring functionality to try
and prevent cleartext logging to disk:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/mysql-logging.html

Perhaps there's also something that removes them from the existing file

More likely would be that perhaps you had the mysql client wrapped with
a shell script that changed MYSQL_HISTFILE to something other than
~/.mysql_history ?

Thanks for reporting anyway, we'll try and figure this one out.