How do I get Terminal to remember previous commands after closing window in SL 10.6.8?

Any way to enable scrollbacks after you quit the window? Even if the app itself is still running, closing the window and opening a new one doesn't work.

I am SURE it used to work on my old Mac, but I simply cannot find an option in preferences anywhere and Google is not my friend.

I had the same issue on my new Mac, when I checked the history file ~/.bash_history I discovered that it was owned by root. I run sudo chown username .bash_history, now when I reopen terminal my history is preserved.

Assuming you have not modified the default behaviour in any way, you should be able to scroll through a list of your previous commands simply by hitting the up cursor key. There are so many alternatives depending on what shell you are using if you have changed the defaults etc, so that would be useful info. Also, what OS are you on, from Lion onwards Terminal reloads the last 500 lines out output even from the last closed screen on restart.

If your Terminal is losing the history (previously entered commands), try this:

Check first, in your home directory, who owns the file .bash_history:

ls -al .bash_history

If for some reason the file is not owned by your username, will appear (for example) in the listing as:

-rw-------    1 root      staff       32 Jul 11  2011 .bash_history

Fix it with:

sudo chown [username] .bash_history

(source: http://www.paulmc.org/2009/01/enable-bash-history-in-terminal/ )

Now close Terminal, open it again and you should be capable of seeing previously entered commands by pressing the up arrow (that is, if you're using bash as your Terminal shell - - the default).