[tezza]

At work unfortunately the sys admins disable customisation. Especially HIST_SIZE etc :(

At regular intervals, especially when I have important commands to save I do a:

  cp ~/.bash_history ~/bash_history_bak_2016-05-31.txt

That way I can do a:

  cat ~/bash_history* | grep <important-command> 

to find it

[sergiosgc]

Can't you work around the restriction using something like ProxyCommand /bin/bash --login --rcfile .mybashrc on ~/.ssh/config?