Clearing Screen on Logout?

[Carlos Williams]

I noticed that with Debian when I logout of my system, it doesn't
clear the screen to the login screen via bash only (non GUI). Normally
in RHEL, Arch, Ubuntu, and most other distributions when a user logs
out or exits from a shell, their history is not visible on the screen
but in Debian, it is. Is there any way to change this? How can I exit
a shell window in Debian and have it clear my scrolled up commands and
actions to a blank login screen?

[James Zuelow]

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, 02 March, 2010 09:00
Subject: Re: Clearing Screen on Logout?
On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 6:52 PM, Carlos Williams

Post by Carlos Williams
I noticed that with Debian when I logout of my system, it doesn't
clear the screen to the login screen via bash only (non GUI).

# ~/.bash_logout: executed by bash(1) when login shell exits.
# when leaving the console clear the screen to increase privacy
if [ "$SHLVL" = 1 ]; then
[ -x /usr/bin/clear_console ] && /usr/bin/clear_console -q
fi
however a simple "clear" should be enough
bye

Another way of doing that is:

mv /etc/issue /etc/issue.original
clear > /etc/issue
cat /etc/issue.original >> /etc/issue

Then the console will clear when /etc/issue is read.

Although I do not usually change my shell so while I think it is a bit more portable if you use something like csh, etc. I am not absolutely positive.

James

[Carlos Williams]

I found a pretty global / easy resolution.

http://www.patoche.org/LTT/screen/00000004.html

[ludovico van]

Post by Carlos Williams
I noticed that with Debian when I logout of my system, it doesn't
clear the screen to the login screen via bash only (non GUI).

i have this in $HOME/.bash_logout :
# ~/.bash_logout: executed by bash(1) when login shell exits.

# when leaving the console clear the screen to increase privacy

if [ "$SHLVL" = 1 ]; then
[ -x /usr/bin/clear_console ] && /usr/bin/clear_console -q
fi

however a simple "clear" should be enough

bye

[Chris Jackson]

I think having to type 'clear' before log out is crazy. Also if I have
1,000 users, thats a log of files to edit. Is there no global file
config that will achieve this?

/etc/bash.logout

--
Chris Jackson
Shadowcat Systems Ltd.

[Carlos Williams]

# ~/.bash_logout: executed by bash(1) when login shell exits.
# when leaving the console clear the screen to increase privacy
if [ "$SHLVL" = 1 ]; then
   [ -x /usr/bin/clear_console ] && /usr/bin/clear_console -q
fi
however a simple "clear" should be enough
bye

I think having to type 'clear' before log out is crazy. Also if I have
1,000 users, thats a log of files to edit. Is there no global file
config that will achieve this?

[ludovico van]

# ~/.bash_logout: executed by bash(1) when login shell exits.
# when leaving the console clear the screen to increase privacy
if [ "$SHLVL" = 1 ]; then
   [ -x /usr/bin/clear_console ] && /usr/bin/clear_console -q
fi
however a simple "clear" should be enough
bye

I think having to type 'clear' before log out is crazy. Also if I have
1,000 users, thats a log of files to edit. Is there no global file
config that will achieve this?

I mean:
$ echo "clear" > ~/.bash_logout

or just copy the three lines above...

If you need it to be valid for all of your users, use the file
/etc/bash.logout (or is it /etc/bash.bash_logout ?? see
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=546200)

bye

[Stephen Powell]

Post by Carlos Williams
I noticed that with Debian when I logout of my system, it doesn't
clear the screen to the login screen via bash only (non GUI). Normally
in RHEL, Arch, Ubuntu, and most other distributions when a user logs
out or exits from a shell, their history is not visible on the screen
but in Debian, it is. Is there any way to change this? How can I exit
a shell window in Debian and have it clear my scrolled up commands and
actions to a blank login screen?

This is true only for the root user. If you logout from a virtual
terminal as a normal user, the screen clears. If you logout from
a virtual terminal as root, the screen does not clear. That's because
root does not have the standard .bash_logout file. It's easy to fix.
Just copy it from your non-superuser self. For example, if your
normal user account is "carlos", then issue this command as root:

cp /home/carlos/.bash_logout ~

I can't remember if it takes effect on the logout from this session,
but it will for sure on logout after the next login.