Not sure if this is the default, but my Dwarf would run sh shell upon login as root.
sh does not seem to support history, so my up arrow never allowed me to pull up a previous command … frustrating.
I found a tip that seems to work:
I created a ~.profile file which contains
export SHELL=/bin/bash
exec /bin/bash
And now upon login I am left in the bash shell, which does support history.