Package: bash Version: 4.4-2 Severity: normal Hi! The bash package includes a Debian-specific program, "clear_console". It clears the screen then naively tries to nuke the scrollback by briefly switching to another virtual console then switching back. This worked only accidentally thanks to a quirk of the Linux console -- no other tabbed/etc terminal I know loses scrollback on switch. And now, Manuel Schölling has submitted a patch that eliminates this loss.
That patch comes with a config option that defaults to "n" precisely because of Debian's clear_console, but anyone who enables it won't have his scrollback cleared, with possible privacy loss or worse. Since Linux 2.6.39, you can print "\e[3J" to securely erase the current console. While it is Linux console specific, terminals are supposed to silently ignore unknown well-formed commands -- I've verified that FreeBSD, Hurd and Solaris consoles (ie, kernels with a Debian port) do so; and even if some ill-behaved terminal shows junk, you can clear the screen the old way just to be sure. -- System Information: Debian Release: stretch/sid APT prefers unstable-debug APT policy: (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (150, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Foreign Architectures: i386 Kernel: Linux 4.8.9+ (SMP w/6 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init) Versions of packages bash depends on: ii base-files 9.6 ii dash 0.5.8-2.3 ii debianutils 4.8.1 ii libc6 2.24-5 ii libtinfo5 6.0+20160917-1 Versions of packages bash recommends: pn bash-completion <none> Versions of packages bash suggests: pn bash-doc <none> -- no debconf information
