This question already has answers here:
In Bash, how to find the lowest-numbered unused file descriptor?
(6 answers)
Closed 1 year ago.
How can I figure out if a file descriptor is currently in use in Bash? For example, if I have a script that reads, writes, and closes fd 3, e.g.
exec 3< <(some command here)
...
cat <&3
exec 3>&-
what's the best way to ensure I'm not interfering with some other purpose for the descriptor that may have been set before my script runs? Do I need to put my whole script in a subshell?
If you do not care if the file descriptor is above 9, you may ask the shell itself to provide one. Of course, the fd is guaranteed to be free by the own shell.
Feature available since bash 4.1+ (2009-12-31) {varname} style automatic file descriptor allocation
$ exec {var}>hellofile
$ echo "$var"
15
$ echo "this is a test" >&${var}
$ cat hellofile
this is a test
$ exec {var}>&- # to close the fd.
In fact, in linux, you can see the open fds with:
$ ls /proc/$$/fd
0 1 2 255
In pure bash, you can use the following method to see if a given file descriptor (3 in this case) is available:
rco="$(true 2>/dev/null >&3; echo $?)"
rci="$(true 2>/dev/null <&3; echo $?)"
if [[ "${rco}${rci}" = "11" ]] ; then
echo "Cannot read or write fd 3, hence okay to use"
fi
This basically works by testing whether you can read or write to the given file handle. Assuming you can do neither, it's probably okay to use.
In terms of finding the first free descriptor, you can use something like:
exec 3>/dev/null # Testing, comment out to make
exec 4</dev/null # descriptor available.
found=none
for fd in {0..200}; do
rco="$(true 2>/dev/null >&${fd}; echo $?)"
rci="$(true 2>/dev/null <&${fd}; echo $?)"
[[ "${rco}${rci}" = "11" ]] && found=${fd} && break
done
echo "First free is ${found}"
Running that script gives 5 as the first free descriptor but you can play around with the exec lines to see how making an earlier one available will allow the code snippet to find it.
As pointed out in the comments, systems that provide procfs (the /proc file system) have another way in which they can detect free descriptors. The /proc/PID/fd directory will contain an entry for each open file descriptor as follows:
pax> ls -1 /proc/$$/fd
0
1
2
255
So you could use a script similar to the one above to find a free entry in there:
exec 3>/dev/null # Testing, comment out to make
exec 4</dev/null # descriptor available.
found=none
for fd in {0..200} ; do
[[ ! -e /proc/$$/fd/${fd} ]] && found=${fd} && break
done
echo "First free is ${found}"
Just keep in mind that not all systems providing bash will necessarily have procfs (the BDSs and CygWin being examples). Should be fine for Linux if that's the OS you're targeting.
Of course, you do still have the option of wrapping your entire shell script as something like:
(
# Your current script goes here
)
In that case, the file handles will be preserved outside those parentheses and you can manipulate them within as you see fit.
The other answer that uses pre-bash-4.1 syntax does a lot unnecessary subshell spawning and redundant checks. It also has an arbitrary cut-off for the maximum FD number.
The following code should do the trick with no subshell spawning (other than for a ulimit call if we want to get a decent upper limit on FD numbers).
fd=2 max=$(ulimit -n) &&
while ((++fd < max)); do
! <&$fd && break
done 2>/dev/null &&
echo $fd
Basically we just iterate over possible FDs until we reach one we can't dupe.
In order to avoid the Bad file descriptor error message from the last loop iteration, we redirect stderr for the whole while loop.
For those who prefer one-liners and doesnt have Bash-4.1+ available:
{ seq 0 255; ls -1 /proc/$$/fd; } | sort -n | uniq -u | head -1
I decided to summarize the brilliant answer given by #paxdiablo into the single shell function with two auxiliary ones:
fd_used_sym() {
[ -e "/proc/$$/fd/$1" ]
}
fd_used_rw() {
: 2>/dev/null >&$1 || : 2>/dev/null <&$1
}
fd_free() {
local fd_check
if [ -e "/proc/$$/fd" ]
then
fd_check=fd_used_sym
else
fd_check=fd_used_rw
fi
for n in {0..255}
do
eval $fd_check $n || {
echo "$n"
return
}
done
}
There is sort of simplifications -- escape from auxiliary functions without losing the main functionality:
fd_free() {
local fd_check
if [ -e "/proc/$$/fd" ]
then
fd_check='[ -e "/proc/$$/fd/$n" ]'
else
fd_check=': 2>/dev/null >&$n || : 2>/dev/null <&$n'
fi
for n in {0..255}
do
eval $fd_check || {
echo "$n"
return
}
done
}
Both functions check availability of the file descriptor and output the number of the first found free file descriptor. Benefits are following:
both check ways are implemented (via /proc/$$/fd/X and R/W to a particular FD)
builtins are used only
Related
I have the following shell script. The purpose is to loop thru each line of the target file (whose path is the input parameter to the script) and do work against each line. Now, it seems only work with the very first line in the target file and stops after that line got processed. Is there anything wrong with my script?
#!/bin/bash
# SCRIPT: do.sh
# PURPOSE: loop thru the targets
FILENAME=$1
count=0
echo "proceed with $FILENAME"
while read LINE; do
let count++
echo "$count $LINE"
sh ./do_work.sh $LINE
done < $FILENAME
echo "\ntotal $count targets"
In do_work.sh, I run a couple of ssh commands.
The problem is that do_work.sh runs ssh commands and by default ssh reads from stdin which is your input file. As a result, you only see the first line processed, because the command consumes the rest of the file and your while loop terminates.
This happens not just for ssh, but for any command that reads stdin, including mplayer, ffmpeg, HandBrakeCLI, httpie, brew install, and more.
To prevent this, pass the -n option to your ssh command to make it read from /dev/null instead of stdin. Other commands have similar flags, or you can universally use < /dev/null.
A very simple and robust workaround is to change the file descriptor from which the read command receives input.
This is accomplished by two modifications: the -u argument to read, and the redirection operator for < $FILENAME.
In BASH, the default file descriptor values (i.e. values for -u in read) are:
0 = stdin
1 = stdout
2 = stderr
So just choose some other unused file descriptor, like 9 just for fun.
Thus, the following would be the workaround:
while read -u 9 LINE; do
let count++
echo "$count $LINE"
sh ./do_work.sh $LINE
done 9< $FILENAME
Notice the two modifications:
read becomes read -u 9
< $FILENAME becomes 9< $FILENAME
As a best practice, I do this for all while loops I write in BASH.
If you have nested loops using read, use a different file descriptor for each one (9,8,7,...).
More generally, a workaround which isn't specific to ssh is to redirect standard input for any command which might otherwise consume the while loop's input.
while read -r line; do
((count++))
echo "$count $line"
sh ./do_work.sh "$line" </dev/null
done < "$filename"
The addition of </dev/null is the crucial point here, though the corrected quoting is also somewhat important for robustness; see also When to wrap quotes around a shell variable?. You will want to use read -r unless you specifically require the slightly odd legacy behavior you get for backslashes in the input without -r. Finally, avoid upper case for your private variables.
Another workaround of sorts which is somewhat specific to ssh is to make sure any ssh command has its standard input tied up, e.g. by changing
ssh otherhost some commands here
to instead read the commands from a here document, which conveniently (for this particular scenario) ties up the standard input of ssh for the commands:
ssh otherhost <<'____HERE'
some commands here
____HERE
ssh -n option prevents checking the exit status of ssh when using HEREdoc while piping output to another program.
So use of /dev/null as stdin is preferred.
#!/bin/bash
while read ONELINE ; do
ssh ubuntu#host_xyz </dev/null <<EOF 2>&1 | filter_pgm
echo "Hi, $ONELINE. You come here often?"
process_response_pgm
EOF
if [ ${PIPESTATUS[0]} -ne 0 ] ; then
echo "aborting loop"
exit ${PIPESTATUS[0]}
fi
done << input_list.txt
This was happening to me because I had set -e and a grep in a loop was returning with no output (which gives a non-zero error code).
I have the following shell script. The purpose is to loop thru each line of the target file (whose path is the input parameter to the script) and do work against each line. Now, it seems only work with the very first line in the target file and stops after that line got processed. Is there anything wrong with my script?
#!/bin/bash
# SCRIPT: do.sh
# PURPOSE: loop thru the targets
FILENAME=$1
count=0
echo "proceed with $FILENAME"
while read LINE; do
let count++
echo "$count $LINE"
sh ./do_work.sh $LINE
done < $FILENAME
echo "\ntotal $count targets"
In do_work.sh, I run a couple of ssh commands.
The problem is that do_work.sh runs ssh commands and by default ssh reads from stdin which is your input file. As a result, you only see the first line processed, because the command consumes the rest of the file and your while loop terminates.
This happens not just for ssh, but for any command that reads stdin, including mplayer, ffmpeg, HandBrakeCLI, httpie, brew install, and more.
To prevent this, pass the -n option to your ssh command to make it read from /dev/null instead of stdin. Other commands have similar flags, or you can universally use < /dev/null.
A very simple and robust workaround is to change the file descriptor from which the read command receives input.
This is accomplished by two modifications: the -u argument to read, and the redirection operator for < $FILENAME.
In BASH, the default file descriptor values (i.e. values for -u in read) are:
0 = stdin
1 = stdout
2 = stderr
So just choose some other unused file descriptor, like 9 just for fun.
Thus, the following would be the workaround:
while read -u 9 LINE; do
let count++
echo "$count $LINE"
sh ./do_work.sh $LINE
done 9< $FILENAME
Notice the two modifications:
read becomes read -u 9
< $FILENAME becomes 9< $FILENAME
As a best practice, I do this for all while loops I write in BASH.
If you have nested loops using read, use a different file descriptor for each one (9,8,7,...).
More generally, a workaround which isn't specific to ssh is to redirect standard input for any command which might otherwise consume the while loop's input.
while read -r line; do
((count++))
echo "$count $line"
sh ./do_work.sh "$line" </dev/null
done < "$filename"
The addition of </dev/null is the crucial point here, though the corrected quoting is also somewhat important for robustness; see also When to wrap quotes around a shell variable?. You will want to use read -r unless you specifically require the slightly odd legacy behavior you get for backslashes in the input without -r. Finally, avoid upper case for your private variables.
Another workaround of sorts which is somewhat specific to ssh is to make sure any ssh command has its standard input tied up, e.g. by changing
ssh otherhost some commands here
to instead read the commands from a here document, which conveniently (for this particular scenario) ties up the standard input of ssh for the commands:
ssh otherhost <<'____HERE'
some commands here
____HERE
ssh -n option prevents checking the exit status of ssh when using HEREdoc while piping output to another program.
So use of /dev/null as stdin is preferred.
#!/bin/bash
while read ONELINE ; do
ssh ubuntu#host_xyz </dev/null <<EOF 2>&1 | filter_pgm
echo "Hi, $ONELINE. You come here often?"
process_response_pgm
EOF
if [ ${PIPESTATUS[0]} -ne 0 ] ; then
echo "aborting loop"
exit ${PIPESTATUS[0]}
fi
done << input_list.txt
This was happening to me because I had set -e and a grep in a loop was returning with no output (which gives a non-zero error code).
I have the following shell script. The purpose is to loop thru each line of the target file (whose path is the input parameter to the script) and do work against each line. Now, it seems only work with the very first line in the target file and stops after that line got processed. Is there anything wrong with my script?
#!/bin/bash
# SCRIPT: do.sh
# PURPOSE: loop thru the targets
FILENAME=$1
count=0
echo "proceed with $FILENAME"
while read LINE; do
let count++
echo "$count $LINE"
sh ./do_work.sh $LINE
done < $FILENAME
echo "\ntotal $count targets"
In do_work.sh, I run a couple of ssh commands.
The problem is that do_work.sh runs ssh commands and by default ssh reads from stdin which is your input file. As a result, you only see the first line processed, because the command consumes the rest of the file and your while loop terminates.
This happens not just for ssh, but for any command that reads stdin, including mplayer, ffmpeg, HandBrakeCLI, httpie, brew install, and more.
To prevent this, pass the -n option to your ssh command to make it read from /dev/null instead of stdin. Other commands have similar flags, or you can universally use < /dev/null.
A very simple and robust workaround is to change the file descriptor from which the read command receives input.
This is accomplished by two modifications: the -u argument to read, and the redirection operator for < $FILENAME.
In BASH, the default file descriptor values (i.e. values for -u in read) are:
0 = stdin
1 = stdout
2 = stderr
So just choose some other unused file descriptor, like 9 just for fun.
Thus, the following would be the workaround:
while read -u 9 LINE; do
let count++
echo "$count $LINE"
sh ./do_work.sh $LINE
done 9< $FILENAME
Notice the two modifications:
read becomes read -u 9
< $FILENAME becomes 9< $FILENAME
As a best practice, I do this for all while loops I write in BASH.
If you have nested loops using read, use a different file descriptor for each one (9,8,7,...).
More generally, a workaround which isn't specific to ssh is to redirect standard input for any command which might otherwise consume the while loop's input.
while read -r line; do
((count++))
echo "$count $line"
sh ./do_work.sh "$line" </dev/null
done < "$filename"
The addition of </dev/null is the crucial point here, though the corrected quoting is also somewhat important for robustness; see also When to wrap quotes around a shell variable?. You will want to use read -r unless you specifically require the slightly odd legacy behavior you get for backslashes in the input without -r. Finally, avoid upper case for your private variables.
Another workaround of sorts which is somewhat specific to ssh is to make sure any ssh command has its standard input tied up, e.g. by changing
ssh otherhost some commands here
to instead read the commands from a here document, which conveniently (for this particular scenario) ties up the standard input of ssh for the commands:
ssh otherhost <<'____HERE'
some commands here
____HERE
ssh -n option prevents checking the exit status of ssh when using HEREdoc while piping output to another program.
So use of /dev/null as stdin is preferred.
#!/bin/bash
while read ONELINE ; do
ssh ubuntu#host_xyz </dev/null <<EOF 2>&1 | filter_pgm
echo "Hi, $ONELINE. You come here often?"
process_response_pgm
EOF
if [ ${PIPESTATUS[0]} -ne 0 ] ; then
echo "aborting loop"
exit ${PIPESTATUS[0]}
fi
done << input_list.txt
This was happening to me because I had set -e and a grep in a loop was returning with no output (which gives a non-zero error code).
I have the following shell script. The purpose is to loop thru each line of the target file (whose path is the input parameter to the script) and do work against each line. Now, it seems only work with the very first line in the target file and stops after that line got processed. Is there anything wrong with my script?
#!/bin/bash
# SCRIPT: do.sh
# PURPOSE: loop thru the targets
FILENAME=$1
count=0
echo "proceed with $FILENAME"
while read LINE; do
let count++
echo "$count $LINE"
sh ./do_work.sh $LINE
done < $FILENAME
echo "\ntotal $count targets"
In do_work.sh, I run a couple of ssh commands.
The problem is that do_work.sh runs ssh commands and by default ssh reads from stdin which is your input file. As a result, you only see the first line processed, because the command consumes the rest of the file and your while loop terminates.
This happens not just for ssh, but for any command that reads stdin, including mplayer, ffmpeg, HandBrakeCLI, httpie, brew install, and more.
To prevent this, pass the -n option to your ssh command to make it read from /dev/null instead of stdin. Other commands have similar flags, or you can universally use < /dev/null.
A very simple and robust workaround is to change the file descriptor from which the read command receives input.
This is accomplished by two modifications: the -u argument to read, and the redirection operator for < $FILENAME.
In BASH, the default file descriptor values (i.e. values for -u in read) are:
0 = stdin
1 = stdout
2 = stderr
So just choose some other unused file descriptor, like 9 just for fun.
Thus, the following would be the workaround:
while read -u 9 LINE; do
let count++
echo "$count $LINE"
sh ./do_work.sh $LINE
done 9< $FILENAME
Notice the two modifications:
read becomes read -u 9
< $FILENAME becomes 9< $FILENAME
As a best practice, I do this for all while loops I write in BASH.
If you have nested loops using read, use a different file descriptor for each one (9,8,7,...).
More generally, a workaround which isn't specific to ssh is to redirect standard input for any command which might otherwise consume the while loop's input.
while read -r line; do
((count++))
echo "$count $line"
sh ./do_work.sh "$line" </dev/null
done < "$filename"
The addition of </dev/null is the crucial point here, though the corrected quoting is also somewhat important for robustness; see also When to wrap quotes around a shell variable?. You will want to use read -r unless you specifically require the slightly odd legacy behavior you get for backslashes in the input without -r. Finally, avoid upper case for your private variables.
Another workaround of sorts which is somewhat specific to ssh is to make sure any ssh command has its standard input tied up, e.g. by changing
ssh otherhost some commands here
to instead read the commands from a here document, which conveniently (for this particular scenario) ties up the standard input of ssh for the commands:
ssh otherhost <<'____HERE'
some commands here
____HERE
ssh -n option prevents checking the exit status of ssh when using HEREdoc while piping output to another program.
So use of /dev/null as stdin is preferred.
#!/bin/bash
while read ONELINE ; do
ssh ubuntu#host_xyz </dev/null <<EOF 2>&1 | filter_pgm
echo "Hi, $ONELINE. You come here often?"
process_response_pgm
EOF
if [ ${PIPESTATUS[0]} -ne 0 ] ; then
echo "aborting loop"
exit ${PIPESTATUS[0]}
fi
done << input_list.txt
This was happening to me because I had set -e and a grep in a loop was returning with no output (which gives a non-zero error code).
I have the following shell script. The purpose is to loop thru each line of the target file (whose path is the input parameter to the script) and do work against each line. Now, it seems only work with the very first line in the target file and stops after that line got processed. Is there anything wrong with my script?
#!/bin/bash
# SCRIPT: do.sh
# PURPOSE: loop thru the targets
FILENAME=$1
count=0
echo "proceed with $FILENAME"
while read LINE; do
let count++
echo "$count $LINE"
sh ./do_work.sh $LINE
done < $FILENAME
echo "\ntotal $count targets"
In do_work.sh, I run a couple of ssh commands.
The problem is that do_work.sh runs ssh commands and by default ssh reads from stdin which is your input file. As a result, you only see the first line processed, because the command consumes the rest of the file and your while loop terminates.
This happens not just for ssh, but for any command that reads stdin, including mplayer, ffmpeg, HandBrakeCLI, httpie, brew install, and more.
To prevent this, pass the -n option to your ssh command to make it read from /dev/null instead of stdin. Other commands have similar flags, or you can universally use < /dev/null.
A very simple and robust workaround is to change the file descriptor from which the read command receives input.
This is accomplished by two modifications: the -u argument to read, and the redirection operator for < $FILENAME.
In BASH, the default file descriptor values (i.e. values for -u in read) are:
0 = stdin
1 = stdout
2 = stderr
So just choose some other unused file descriptor, like 9 just for fun.
Thus, the following would be the workaround:
while read -u 9 LINE; do
let count++
echo "$count $LINE"
sh ./do_work.sh $LINE
done 9< $FILENAME
Notice the two modifications:
read becomes read -u 9
< $FILENAME becomes 9< $FILENAME
As a best practice, I do this for all while loops I write in BASH.
If you have nested loops using read, use a different file descriptor for each one (9,8,7,...).
More generally, a workaround which isn't specific to ssh is to redirect standard input for any command which might otherwise consume the while loop's input.
while read -r line; do
((count++))
echo "$count $line"
sh ./do_work.sh "$line" </dev/null
done < "$filename"
The addition of </dev/null is the crucial point here, though the corrected quoting is also somewhat important for robustness; see also When to wrap quotes around a shell variable?. You will want to use read -r unless you specifically require the slightly odd legacy behavior you get for backslashes in the input without -r. Finally, avoid upper case for your private variables.
Another workaround of sorts which is somewhat specific to ssh is to make sure any ssh command has its standard input tied up, e.g. by changing
ssh otherhost some commands here
to instead read the commands from a here document, which conveniently (for this particular scenario) ties up the standard input of ssh for the commands:
ssh otherhost <<'____HERE'
some commands here
____HERE
ssh -n option prevents checking the exit status of ssh when using HEREdoc while piping output to another program.
So use of /dev/null as stdin is preferred.
#!/bin/bash
while read ONELINE ; do
ssh ubuntu#host_xyz </dev/null <<EOF 2>&1 | filter_pgm
echo "Hi, $ONELINE. You come here often?"
process_response_pgm
EOF
if [ ${PIPESTATUS[0]} -ne 0 ] ; then
echo "aborting loop"
exit ${PIPESTATUS[0]}
fi
done << input_list.txt
This was happening to me because I had set -e and a grep in a loop was returning with no output (which gives a non-zero error code).