DM-Steg

Now that you mention it I do seem to have a tendency to apply sledgehammer types of solutions to computer problems.

Besides using a symlink to /dev/null for .bash_history I once built a framework for generating initramfs images that avoided the difficulties of static linking all pretenses of elegance or efficiency by just throwing the entire contents of /etc /bin /lib* and /sbin into a giant cpio file.

Then there was the time that I was annoyed by automatic vt console blanking so I found the line in the kernel that stores the default timeout value and patched it to 0 (disabled)...

Seems like a waste. Just unset HISTCONTROL and run history -c. From there you get history but it won't be written anywhere (and you don't waste cycles trying to write to /dev/null later).