personally I don't use shell buffer because it doesn't do command line recall like I expect.

In a normal terminal control-r <characters> recalls the last command with those keys, and control-p/n will go back/forward in the history.

with the shell buffer I move upwards in the buffer to recall a command.

(is there a way to configure this differently?)

EDIT: ok it seems like meta-r and meta-p/n do the same thing - kind of.

hmmm, but meta-r doesn't seem to recall from the shell history? It is either a different history or truncated.