Source for fancy_echo usage and documentation - bash

I was looking starting point for an install script that will allow me to automatically provision a new or re-imaged computer and came across one by thoughtbot. However, it makes frequent use of a command that I'm not familiar with, fancy_echo.
fancy_echo() {
local fmt="$1"; shift # shellcheck disable=SC2059
printf "\n$fmt\n" "$#"
}
It's also used in this script by dockyard:
fancy_echo "This script will setup your laptop"
fancy_echo "If you want to reuse your old SSH key, copy your SSH config over before running this script"
fancy_echo "During installation, it will ask for your sudo password a few times"
Since this is run in the command line and looks like bash, I've tried the man pages, the standalone GNU info system and the --help option, all with no luck. I presume it prints to the screen but I don't know, so I'm asking. Here are my questions:
What is fancy_echo and how does it differ from echo?
What is a good source of documentation on it?

It's not a standard command, there's no documentation, it's just the function whose definition you copied, which is internal to that package.
fancy_echo format_string arg arg arg....
is equivalent to
printf format_string arg arg arg....
except that it adds newlines around the output.

Related

What does $VARIABLE$ stand for

..in the following shell script?
$USER1$=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins
As far as i know variable defining is done as-
export USER1=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins
Source:
Ok, the command works. Now I have to implement it into Nagios. Because
all my "local" command not installed by the package-manager shall be
in /usr/lib/nagios/plugins_local I define a $USER2$ variable for this
path:
# vim resource.cfg
...
# Sets $USER1$ to be the path to the plugins
$USER1$=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins
# my own check-commands live here:
$USER2$=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins_local
$USERn$ (more specifically, $USER1 to $USER255$) is the way to declare a user-defined Macro in Nagios.
See also "Understanding Macros and how they work."
More specifically and more interestingly this is a good way to hide usernames/passwords needed withing database/http checks for instance.
This means that you can attempt soemthing like the following directly in your configuration files and thus you do not fear that you are committing or backing up usernames/passwords.
./nrpe -c check_http -H $IP -a $USER1$:$USER2$ -u $LINK
An aside: Unfortunetly Nagios only supports up to 32 of the USER variables.

Obfuscating a command within a shell script

There are a lot of tips (and warnings) on here for obfuscating various items within scripts.
I'm not trying to hide a password, I'm just wondering if I can obfuscate an actuall command within the script to defeat the casual user/grepper.
Background: We have a piece of software that helps manage machines within the environment. These machines are owned by the enterprise. The users sometimes get it in their heads that this computer is theirs and they don't want "The Man" looking over their shoulders.
I've developed a little something that will check to see if a certain process is running, and if not, clone it up and replace.
Again, the purpose of this is not to defeat anyone other than the casual user.
It was suggested that one could echo an octal value (the 'obfuscated' command) and use it as a variable within the script. e.g.:
strongBad=`echo "\0150\0157\0163\0164\0156\0141\0155\0145"`
I could then use $strongBad within the shell script to slyly call the commands that I wanted to call with arguments?
/bin/$strongBad -doThatThingYouDo -DoEEET
Is there any truth to this? So far it's worked via command line directly into shell (using the -e flag with echo) but not so much within the script. I'm getting unexpected output, perhaps the way I'm using it?
As a test, try this in the command line:
strongBad=`echo -e "\0167\0150\0157"`
And then
$strongBad
You should get the same output as "who".
EDIT
Upon further review, the addition of the path to the echo command in the variable is breaking it. Perhaps that's the source of my issue.
You can do a rotate 13 on any command you want hidden beforehand, then just have the the obfuscated command in the shell script.
This little bash script:
#!/bin/bash
function rot13 {
echo "$#" | tr '[a-m][n-z][A-M][N-Z]' '[n-z][a-m][N-Z][A-M]'
}
rot13 echo hello, world!
`rot13 rpub uryyb, jbeyq!`
Produces:
rpub uryyb, jbeyq!
hello, world!

How do I use SSFT (Shell Scripts Frontend Tool) on Ubuntu (or any Linux)?

I can't find a man page or any help for ssft. I want to use it in my bash scripts to select either kdialog (if on KDE) or zenity (if on gnome).
See Shell Scripts Frontend Tool
Surely the help pages are somewhere, but I must be overlooking them.
I am running Debian 6.0 Squeeze stable right now, and it has a manpage for ssft.sh. Try man ssft.sh. If that doesn't do what you want, let me know and you and I will figure out what does.
Update: All right. You have tried the manpage, which doesn't tell you what you want to know. There does not appear to exist any more thorough documentation for Ssft (maybe, when this is all over, you will write and contribute that very documentation). However, in Ssft's source appears to be a test script that makes the software do the various things it is designed to do. Sometimes, a good example is even better than a manual. That test script may be just what you need.
To extract the test script, issue a sequence of commands like the following sequence.
$ cd /tmp
$ apt-get source ssft
$ ls
$ cd ssft-0.9.13 # (Your version number may differ from 0.9.13.)
$ ls
$ cd tests
$ ls
When I do the above, the last ls listing reveals a shell script named ssft-test.sh. Inside that script appear to be several examples of how to use ssft.sh correctly.
http://man.devl.cz/man/1/ssft.sh
ssft.sh(1)
SSFT
Name
ssft.sh - library of shell script frontend functions
Synopsis
. ssft.sh
Description
ssft.sh is a library of shell functions that must be sourced from other scripts. If the script is executed without arguments it prints an usage message and also supports the options --doc, --help and --version.
To get a list of available functions call the script with the --doc argument and to get a description of what a given function does call the script with --doc FUNCTION_NAME.
On the typical case the library must be sourced and the SSFT_FRONTEND variable must be set to the desired frontend (zenity, dialog or text); if the variable is not set the default frontend is noninteractive.
To choose the theorically best looking frontend use the function ssft_choose_frontend as follows:
. ssft.sh [ -n "$SSFT_FRONTEND" ] || SSFT_FRONTEND="$( ssft_choose_frontend )"
Written by Sergio Talens-Oliag .
$ /usr/bin/ssft.sh
Shell Script Frontend Tool (version 0.9.13)
Usage: . ssft.sh
When called directly the program supports the following options:
-d,--doc [FUNCTIONS] Prints the list of available functions. If function names are given prints functions' documentation.
-h,--help This message
-v,--version File version
functions:
$ /usr/bin/ssft.sh -d
ssft_set_textdomain
ssft_reset_textdomain
ssft_choose_frontend
ssft_print_text_title
ssft_display_message
ssft_display_error
ssft_display_emsg
ssft_file_selection
ssft_directory_selection
ssft_progress_bar
ssft_read_string
ssft_read_password
ssft_select_multiple
ssft_select_single
ssft_yesno
ssft_show_file

Ruby, Unicorn, and environment variables

While playing with Heroku, I found their approach of using environment variables for server-local configuration brilliant. Now, while setting up an application server of my own, I find myself wondering how hard that would be to replicate.
I'm deploying a sinatra application, riding Unicorn and Nginx. I know nginx doesn't like to play with the environment, so that one's out. I can probably put the vars somewhere in the unicorn config file, but since that's under version control with the rest of the app, it sort of defeats the purpose of having the configuration sit in the server environment. There is no reason not to keep my app-specific configuration files together with the rest of the app, as far as I'm concerned.
The third, and last (to my knowledge) option, is setting them in the spawning shell. That's where I got lost. I know that login and non-login shells use different rc files, and I'm not sure whether calling something with sudo -u http stuff is or not spawning a login shell. I did some homework, and asked google and man, but I'm still not entirely sure on how to approach it. Maybe I'm just being dumb... either way, I'd really appreciate it if someone could shed some light on the whole shell environment deal.
I think your third possibility is on the right track. What you're missing is the idea of a wrapper script, whose only function is to set the environment and then call the main program with whatever options are required.
To make a wrapper script that can function as a control script (if prodEnv use DB=ProdDB, etc), there is one more piece that simplifies this problem. Bash/ksh both support a feature called sourcing files. This an operation that the shell provides, to open a file and execute what is in the file, just as if it was in-lined in the main script. Like #include in C and other languages.
ksh and bash will automatically source /etc/profile, /var/etc/profile.local (sometimes), $HOME/.profile. There are other filenames that will also get picked up, but in this case, you'll need to make your own env file and the explicitly load it.
As we're talking about wrapper-scripts, and you want to manage how your environment gets set up, you'll want to do the sourcing inside the wrapper script.
How do you source an environment file?
envFile=/path/to/my/envFile
. $envFile
where envFile will be filled with statements like
dbServer=DevDBServer
webServer=QAWebServer
....
you may discover that you need to export these variable for them to be visble
export dbServer webServer
An alternate assignment/export is supported
export dbServer=DevDBServer
export webServer=QAWebServer
Depending on how non-identical your different environments are, you can have your wrapper script figure out which environment file to load.
case $( /bin/hostame ) in
prodServerName )
envFile=/path/2/prod/envFile ;;
QASeverName )
envFile=/path/2/qa/envFile ;;
devSeverName )
envFile=/path/2/dev/envFile ;;
esac
. ${envFile}
#NOW call your program
myProgram -v -f inFile -o outFile ......
As you develop more and more scripts in your data processing environment, you can alway source your envFile at the top. When you eventually change the physical location of a server (or it's name), then you have only one place that you need to make the change.
IHTH
Also a couple of gems dealing with this. figaro that works both with or without heroku. Figaro uses a yaml file (in config and git ignored) to keep track of variables. Another option is dotenv that reads variables from an .env file. And also another article with all them options.
To spawn an interactive shell (a.k.a. login shell) you need to invoke sudo like this:
sudo -i -u <user> <command>
Also you may use -E to preserve the environment. This will allow some variables to be pased for your current environment to the command invoked with sudo.
I solved a similar problem by explicitly telling Unicorn to read a variables file as part of startup in its init.d script. First I created a file in a directory above the application root called variables. In this script I call export on all my environment variables, e.g. export VAR=value. Then I defined a variable GET_VARS=source /path/to/variables in the /etc/init.d/unicorn file. Finally, I modified the start option to read su - $USER -c "$GET_VARS && $CMD" where $CMD is the startup command and $USER is the app user. Thus, the variables defined in the file are exported into the shell of Unicorn's app user on startup. Note that I used an init.d script almost identical to the one from this article.

bash and readline: tab completion in a user input loop?

I'm making a bash script which presents a command line to the user.
The cli code is as this:
#!/bin/bash
cmd1() {
echo $FUNCNAME: "$#"
}
cmd2() {
echo $FUNCNAME: "$#"
}
cmdN() {
echo $FUNCNAME: "$#"
}
__complete() {
echo $allowed_commands
}
shopt -qs extglob
fn_hide_prefix='__'
allowed_commands="$(declare -f | sed -ne '/^'$fn_hide_prefix'.* ()/!s/ ().*//p' | tr '\n' ' ')"
complete -D -W "this should output these words when you hit TAB"
echo "waiting for commands"
while read -ep"-> "; do
history -s $REPLY
case "$REPLY" in
#(${allowed_commands// /|})?(+([[:space:]])*)) $REPLY ;;
\?) __complete ;;
*) echo "invalid command: $REPLY" ;;
esac
done
Clarification: made and tested in Bash 4
So, "read -e" gives readline capabilities, i can recall commands, edit the input line, etc. What i cannot do in any way is to have readline's tab completion to work!!
I tried two things:
How it should be supposedly done: using the bash builtins "complete" and "compgen", which is reported to work here Update: it's not reported to work in scripts.
This ugly workaround
Why doesn't readline behave correctly when using "complete" inside the script? it works when i try it from bash in interactive mode...
After trying a custom completion script that I know works (I use it every day) and running into the same issue (when rigging it up similar to yours), I decided to snoop through the bash 4.1 source, and found this interesting block in bash-4.1/builtins/read.def:edit_line():
old_attempted_completion_function = rl_attempted_completion_function;
rl_attempted_completion_function = (rl_completion_func_t *)NULL;
if (itext)
{
old_startup_hook = rl_startup_hook;
rl_startup_hook = set_itext;
deftext = itext;
}
ret = readline (p);
rl_attempted_completion_function = old_attempted_completion_function;
old_attempted_completion_function = (rl_completion_func_t *)NULL;
It appears that before readline() is called, it resets the completion function to null for some reason that only a bash-hacking long beard might know. Thus, doing this with the read builtin may simply be hard-coded to be disabled.
EDIT: Some more on this: The wrapping code to stop completion in the read builtin occurred between bash-2.05a and bash-2.05b. I found this note in that version's bash-2.05b/CWRU/changelog file:
edit_line (called by read -e) now just does readline's filename completion by setting rl_attempted_completion_function to NULL, since e.g., doing command completion for the first word on the line wasn't really useful
I think it's a legacy oversight, and since programmable completion has come a long way, what you're doing is useful. Maybe you can ask them to add it back in, or just patch it yourself, if that'd be feasible for what you're doing.
Afraid I don't have a different solution aside from what you've come up with so far, but at least we know why it doesn't work with read.
EDIT2: Right, here's a patch I just tested that seems to "work". Passes all unit and reg tests, and shows this output from your script when run using the patched bash, as you expected:
$ ./tabcompl.sh
waiting for commands
-> **<TAB>**
TAB hit output should these this when words you
->
As you'll see, I just commented out those 4 lines and some timer code to reset the rl_attempted_completion_function when read -t is specified and a timeout occurs, which is no longer necessary. If you're going to send Chet something, you may wish to excise the entirety of the rl_attempted_completion_function junk first, but this will at least allow your script to behave properly.
Patch:
--- bash-4.1/builtins/read.def 2009-10-09 00:35:46.000000000 +0900
+++ bash-4.1-patched/builtins/read.def 2011-01-20 07:14:43.000000000 +0900
## -394,10 +394,12 ##
}
old_alrm = set_signal_handler (SIGALRM, sigalrm);
add_unwind_protect (reset_alarm, (char *)NULL);
+/*
#if defined (READLINE)
if (edit)
add_unwind_protect (reset_attempted_completion_function, (char *)NULL);
#endif
+*/
falarm (tmsec, tmusec);
}
## -914,8 +916,10 ##
if (bash_readline_initialized == 0)
initialize_readline ();
+/*
old_attempted_completion_function = rl_attempted_completion_function;
rl_attempted_completion_function = (rl_completion_func_t *)NULL;
+*/
if (itext)
{
old_startup_hook = rl_startup_hook;
## -923,8 +927,10 ##
deftext = itext;
}
ret = readline (p);
+/*
rl_attempted_completion_function = old_attempted_completion_function;
old_attempted_completion_function = (rl_completion_func_t *)NULL;
+*/
if (ret == 0)
return ret;
Keep in mind the patched bash would have to be distributed or made available somehow wherever people would be using your script...
I've been struggling with same issue for some time now and I think I have a solution that works, in my real world case I'm using compgen to generate possible completions. But here is an example that illustrates the core logic:
#!/bin/bash
set -o emacs;
tab() {
READLINE_LINE="foobar"
READLINE_POINT="${#READLINE_LINE}"
}
bind -x '"\t":"tab"';
read -ep "$ ";
Set the emacs option to enable key binding, bind the tab key to a function, change READLINE_LINE to update the line after the prompt, and set READLINE_POINT to reflect the line's new longer length.
In my use case I actually mimic the COMP_WORDS, COMP_CWORD and COMPREPLY variables but this should be sufficient to understand how to go about adding custom tab completion when using read -ep.
You must update READLINE_LINE to change the prompt line (completion single match), printing to stdin prints before the prompt as readline has put the terminal in raw mode and is capturing input.
Well, it seems i finally stumped on the answer, and it sadly is: actually there isn't full support for readline when interfacing it via "read -e".
The answer is given by the BASH maintainer, Chet Ramey. In this thread the exact same issue is addressed:
I'm writing a script with a command line interpreter and I can most things
working (eg. history etc.) except for one thing. The filename completion
works well for some of the commands, but I'd like to use other completion
options for others. Works well from the "real" command line, but I can't
get it to work properly in my "read -e, eval" loop..
You won't be able to do it. `read -e' uses only the readline default
completions.
Chet
So, unless i'm missing something //rant// while bash hands to the programmer the "read -e" mechanism as the mean for full, proper CLI user interfacing, the functionality is crippled, even though the underlying mechanism (readline) works and integrates with the rest of bash flawlessly //end rant//
I have exposed the question to the kind folks at #bash in freenode and been suggested to try with a Readline wrapper like rlfe or rlwrap.
Finally, i contacted Chet himself by mail yesterday, and he confirmed that this is by design, and that he doesn't feel like changing it as the only use case for programmable completion into "read", i.e. presenting a list of commands to the script user, doesn't look like a compelling reason to spend time working on this. Nevertheless he expressed that in case someone actually does the work he would certainly look at the result.
IMHO, not considering worth of the effort the ability to bring up a full CLI with just 5 lines of code, something one wish were possible in a lot of languages, is a mistake.
In this context, i think Simon's answer is brilliant and right in place. I'll try to follow your steps and perhaps with some luck i'll get more info. Been a while since i don't hack in C however, and i assume the amount of code i'll have to grasp to implement will not be trivial. But anyway i'll try.
I'm not sure if this exactly answers the OP question - but I was searching for which command could one use, to obtain the default bash tab completion of known executable commands (as per $PATH), as shown when pressing TAB. Since I was first led to this question (which I think is related), I thought I'd post a note here.
For instance, on my system, typing lua and then TAB gives:
$ lua<TAB>
lua lua5.1 luac luac5.1 lualatex luatex luatools
It turns out, there is a bash built-in (see #949006 Linux command to list all available commands and aliases), called compgen - and I can feed it with the same string lua as in the interactive case, and obtain the same results as if I pressed TAB:
$ compgen -c lua
luac
lua5.1
lua
luac5.1
luatex
lualatex
luatools
... and that is exactly what I was looking for :)
Hope this helps someone,
Cheers!
If you're going to that much effort, why not just add the cost of a fork or two and use something that is more than capable of providing everything you want. https://github.com/hanslub42/rlwrap
#!/bin/bash
which yum && yum install rlwrap
which zypper && zypper install rlwrap
which port && port install rlwrap
which apt-get && apt-get install rlwrap
REPLY=$( rlwrap -o cat )
Or as the man page puts it:
In a shell script, use rlwrap in ’one−shot’ mode as a replacement for read
order=$(rlwrap -p Yellow -S 'Your pizza? ' -H past_orders -P Margherita -o cat)

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