Installing the shell_sink client application

Installing the sink client should be a snap. There are only 2 steps:

1. Install the shellsink-client application
2. Configure a couple environment variables
   

The client is a python application that you can call from the command line to asynchronously upload a command and relevant tags to the shellsink server. When properly configured it will run behind the scenes every time a command is issued. It can also be easily disabled or enabled for times you don't want to log commands. Here are detailed instructions for installation:

Debian Based Distributions
If you have a Debian based distribution you can install shellsink-client by adding the shellsink repository to your apt sources. Go to this page for instructions and follow the instructions under the link that says "Technical details about this PPA." Once you have added the shellsink repository you can update your package lists and install the client with

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install shellsink

Finally, you must append this file to your ~/.bashrc to enable the client. Be sure to replace the default tags with your own meaningful tags and most importantly set the default id to whatever you see here.

Other Types of Unix
For other flavors of unix you can download the shellsink-client executable here and put it in your path. Once the client is installed you must set a few environment variables. Append the contents of this file to your .bashrc or .bash_profile. If you use zsh see this how-to. Be sure to change the id variable to be the one that was assigned to you by the shellsink server on the preferences page. Also change the tags. I always start with the name of the host machine as my base tag so I know which computer logged which command.

Finally, just close your terminal and reopen it. Type a command and go see if it has been logged to the shell_sink server.

Filtering What Goes Into Your History

When I tell people about ShellSink, many of them say, "hey, that's a great idea!" Then the little sysadmin perched on their shoulder crosses her arms and shakes her head. "Tsk, tsk. Storing your shell history on a remote server is not secure!", she says. This is absolutely true. Not only is your bash history passed via an insecure Http connection, but then it is stored unencrypted on Google's servers where a rogue Google employee, someone who hacked Google, or a rogue ShellSink admin could access them. Don't use shellsink on a system that needs to be ultimately secure!

However, Shellsink is safe to use. If you use Google for email, calendar, documents, etc. then you already trust them with information that is probably more sensitive than your shell history. And if you don't trust me you can download the ShellSink source code and spin up your own server using Google's AppEngine. In any case you should still take some basic precautions. Most importantly, never use inline passwords!! ShellSink will send anything your bash history captures.

Here are several ways to safeguard yourself against sending sensitive information to ShellSink. One technique is to add the following to your .bashrc:

HISTCONTROL=ignorespace;

Now any command you precede with a space will NOT be captured by the history, and thus will not be sent to the ShellSink server. Another technique is to add the following to your .bashrc:

HISTIGNORE="netstat*:sqlplus*"

In this example any command that starts with netstat or sqlplus will automatically be ignored by the shell history and ShellSink. Both these techniques give you different granularity control over what gets sent to ShellSink. The first technique works on a per command basis and the second covers all commands.

Finally, there is the nuclear option:

shellsink-client -d

This completely disables ShellSink for all terminals. I don't really have much use for this one, but when you start to do something that you are ultra paranoid about, this is one way to be sure nothing is leaving your computer via ShellSink. To re-enable ShellSink simply do this:

shellsink-client -e

Using shellsink with ZSH is easy

You don't have to use bash to use shellsink. Shellsink will work with any shell that supports the following features:

• Concept of a command that always executes before your command is run
• Concept of a history file
• Concept of appending to the history file each time you run a command

Z-Shell is another great shell and when configured correctly it supports all these things. Here is a set of instructions to make shellsink work for zsh.

1. Grab the sample zshrc
2. Concatenate that to ~/.zshrc
3. make a symlink from .bash_history to .zhistory like this:

   ln -s ~/.zhistory ~/.bash_history

4. Restart your shell

Easy, right? Here is a list of my References:

• http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Zsh#Shell_History
• man zshmisc
• man zsh
  

How to use tags in the sink.

Tags can be useful in many different ways. I thought I would share some of the ways I use tags.

1. Using tags to say what computer has logged the command: I set the SHELL_SINK_TAGS environment variable in my bash_profile to indicate what machine logged a particular command like this:

   SHELL_SINK_TAGS=myhost

   This is particularly useful because I let several machines log their commands to the same shell-sink account, and if I didn't do that I wouldn't be able to remember which machine logged what.
2. Using tags to group commands: Often times when I am working on a particular project I want to indicate that the commands I am issueing are related to that project. This makes it easy to remember the context of commands in my history and helps me find things later. Let's say I have a project called "gloop". When I set down to work on gloop I'll set my tags environment variable to indicate that as follows:

   export SHELL_SINK_TAGS=$SHELL_SINK_TAGS:gloop

   Now any commands issue in the terminal I am working in will get tagged with gloop. When I want to stop tagging with the gloop tag I simply issue the following command

   source ~/.bash_profile

   . If your SHELL_SINK_TAGS variable is defined in a different file than mine you will need to source the appropriate file for your environment. On ubuntu that file is ~/.bashrc
3. Using tags to control your RSS feed: If you go to the preferences page of your shellsink account you will see that you can turn on an rss feed. You can also filter your rss feed by any tag, so if you only want people to be able to see certain commands in the feed you can choose the appropriate tag from the droplist. As soon as you select something in the droplist only commands with that tag will appear in your RSS feed.
4. Using tags to pull: The shellsink-client application normally just pushes your commands out to the server, but it can also pull commands from the server and put them into your history file. If you issue

   shellsink-client -pt gloop

   . The most recent 20 commands tagged with gloop will be pulled into your bash history file. This is especially useful for making all the commands for a particular task immediately available in your history file.

These are just a few of the ways you can use tags in shellsink. Some things to remember while using tags. Currently you can only add a maximum of four tags at a time. When adding multiple tags from the client make sure you use a colon delimited list of tags. When adding multiple tags from the web application use a comma delimited list of tags. Enjoy, and please leave your own recipes for working with tags here in the comments.

Photo Credit: sarah parrott