pfSense

Historically we disabled shell command history tracking primarily because embedded/NanoBSD had a read-only filesystem. Those platforms have been deprecated for some time now, so that roadblock is no longer in the way and we could enable command history which would be very convenient for admins who spend any significant amount of time in the shell.

There is a potential security concern if someone types a command with sensitive parameters (e.g. password, API key, etc) and that gets logged in the history file, so there are a couple choices:

1. Make history opt-in by enabling a setting
2. Make history opt-out for those who are concerned

Either way we can also document a method to clear it (history -c; history -S)

EDIT: The method for setting this value has changed since this Redmine issue. See #12675 for updated information.