I’d like to clear the scrollback buffer on Linux console VTs programmatically. i.e. not just clear the current visible screen, but the entire scrollback buffer, too. I.e. everything that after a clear screen would still be visible with Alt-PgUp should be gone too. Anybody got an idea how to achieve that in nice code?
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Answer
I don’t think this is in mainline yet, but linux-next has a patch to support a new console escape sequence that clears the screen and the scrollback buffer: CSI 3 J
For something that works without having to upgrade your kernel, you can use:
chvt 42; chvt <current tty no>; echo -en "e[1;1He[2J"
Alternatively:
echo -e "e[12;42]"; sleep .01; echo -en "e[12;<current tty no>]e[1;1He[2J"
You can get the current tty number with:
$( ls -l /proc/self/fd | sed -ne 's/.*tty//p' )