I'm using FreeBSD 11, and Bash as my shell. I've checked all the basics.

• History shows as "on"
• HISTFILE, HISTFILESIZE and HISTSIZE are all set with sensible values.
• $HISTFILE exists and has rw permissions and a size of 9 bytes (ls -lt $HISTFILE)

That should be all that's needed. Yet there we sit. history shows nothing. Not a single line is held in the shell, and command history refuses to work.

What else can I try, to get history working?