Bash problem

[jingo811]

I'm trying to learn BASH scripting by following this tutorial
http://www.linuxcommand.org/wss0010.php
I did everything except add the directory path. I just created home/bin and test my scripts by changing to that directory.
The thing is that trick wored a few days ago. Now when I try to run my_script it won't run.
Can you see what's wrong?

mike@sanka:~/bin$ ls -la
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 mike mike 4096 2007-02-12 09:56 .
drwxr-xr-x 55 mike mike 4096 2007-02-17 18:34 ..
-rwxr-xr-x 1 mike mike 51 2007-02-12 09:24 my_script
mike@sanka:~/bin$ chmod 755 my_script
mike@sanka:~/bin$ ls
my_script
mike@sanka:~/bin$ my_script
bash: my_script: command not found
mike@sanka:~/bin$



mike@sanka:~/bin$ less my_script

#!/bin/bash
# My first script

echo "Hello World!"
my_script (END)

[nereid]

I think that your personal bin folder isn't in your path. So you have to call this script like this



./my_script


Notice the dot and the slash in front of the script, to tell bash that it should look in the current directory to find the script.

[thomasaaron]

The error message you are receiving is not referring to the location of your script.

It is referring to the last line of your script, which starts with "my_script"

It is telling you that "my_script" is not a valid command.

You can delete that line altogether from your script and everything should work fine.

Best,
Tom

[jingo811]

Tnx
./my_script solved it!

[thomasaaron]

Ok.
My bad.
T

[jingo811]

OK new problem. Instead of me posting a new thread for every new BASH question I'm gonna make all my future BASH problems in here. (OK moderators!?)
I got stuck already on lesson 2 http://www.linuxcommand.org/wss0020.php and part of the previous lesson were you were supposed to add your directory into .bash_profile file.


# ~/.bash_profile: executed by bash(1) for login shells.
# see /usr/share/doc/bash/examples/startup-files for examples.
# the files are located in the bash-doc package.

# the default umask is set in /etc/login.defs
#umask 022

# include .bashrc if it exists
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
. ~/.bashrc
fi

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d ~/bin ] ; then
PATH=~/bin:"${PATH}"
fi

# My custom commands
export PATH=$PATH:home/mike/bin
alias l='ls -l'


I restarted my PC and doing all the commands in terminal I can't make anything work. What have I done wrong this time?


mike@sanka:~$ ./my_script
bash: ./my_script: No such file or directory
mike@sanka:~$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games
mike@sanka:~$ l
bash: l: command not found
mike@sanka:~$ cd bin
mike@sanka:~/bin$ ./my_script
Hello World!
mike@sanka:~/bin$

[WW]

Put your custom commands in ~/.bashrc, not in ~/.bash_profile. .bash_profile is for "login shells"; when you open up a terminal, you are not starting a new login shell.

Also, I think you are missing a / in your command to change PATH:

export PATH=$PATH:/home/mike/bin

[WW]

One more comment: Once you have correctly set your PATH to include /home/mike/bin, you can use the command my_script anywhere.

When you put ./ in front of a command, you are explicitly telling the shell to look for the command in the current directory. So the command ./my_script will not work when run in your home directory, no matter what your PATH is set to (unless you happen to have a copy of my_script in your home directory).

[jingo811]

When I do my changes in .bashrc is it enough that I do [Ctrl-Alt-Backspace] to enable the changes or do I need to do a reboot for every change in this file?
Second question is it I who read and interpreted the Tutorial lesson 1 wrong or did the author not know that editing the .bash_profile won't work in Ubuntu like on his distro?

[WW]

No need for ctrl-alt-backspace, and definitely no need to reboot! Just start a new terminal, and start using it.

[po0f]

jingo811,


$ ln -s ~/.bash_profile ~/.profile

GDM will source ~/.profile on login, and ~/.bash_profile (through the symlink) will source ~/.bashrc. At least it works for me. :)

And to answer your other question, it might have slipped the author's mind that someone might be doing this from a terminal emulator. If you try it from a virtual console (Ctrl-F(1,6)), you'll see that it works the way the author presented it.

Also, most terminal emulators (gnome-terminal, urxvt, etc) usually have an option to set whether it should behave like a login terminal, ie it will source the proper files upon opening. I know with urxvt the resource is "urxvt.loginShell: <bool>". I'm sure gnome-terminal has this option as well, I just can't recall exactly how to set it.