Weird problem in running bash script - bash

I wrote a bash script that fetches lyrics from a website. The script is here --> http://scrippets.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/fetching-lyrics-of-songs-from-the-terminal/ (the indentations in the script are correct unlike how it looks on the blog)
This script works perfectly well when executed from the terminal. Now i created a custom keyboard shortcut using compiz commands, that executes the following command when the right key combination is pressed :
gnome-terminal --working-directory="/home/tapan/sandbox/bash/" --window-with-profile=lyrics -e "/home/tapan/sandbox/bash/lyrics.sh" -t "`rhythmbox-client --print-playing`"
I created a new profile called "lyrics" to give the terminal that opens up a custom look. When i open up a terminal with this profile and run the script, it works perfectly fine again. However, when i use the keyboard shortcut to run the custom command, i get the following error:
Pink Floyd - Is There Anybody Out There?
wget: missing URL
Usage: wget [OPTION]... [URL]...
Try `wget --help' for more options.
cat: 3.txt: No such file or directory
I cannot figure out whats wrong. I mean if it works perfectly well in the terminal normally, why shouldn't this work? Any suggestions?
PS: The script i have written is pretty elementary and noobish, so any suggestions to improve it are also welcome in the comments :)
EDIT: The output has changed a little, now it just shows the name of the song playing and nothing else. Though sometimes it still shows the wget error.
EDIT2: When i run that gnome terminal command from a terminal, it works. The problem is only when running it with the keyboard shortcut using compiz commands or if i use the run dialog (the alt+f2 one).

The two wget commands should probably have the url variables in double quotes, for example: wget -q -U Mozilla -O 1.txt $link should be wget -q -U Mozilla -O 1.txt "$link"

You need to uriencode your song title so that special characters like '?', '&', '%', and '+' are not passed literally in your URL.
name3=${name2//\?/%3F}
searchq=${name3// /+}
will handle the ?'s. I don't know of a more general solution in bash without resorting to one-line Perl or Python scripts.

Related

Can't start script via screen command

I have a script, and I want to make it work in background after boot. Therefore, I added the command below into rc.local. However, it doesn't work.
sudo -iu executerroot screen -dmS test bash -c "bash /home/pi/FileServer/Run; exec bash"
Also I've tried commands in https://askubuntu.com/questions/261899/run-a-screen-session-on-boot-from-rc-local site but no one worked for me. If I execute
sudo -iu executerroot screen -dmS test bash -c "bash /home/pi/FileServer/Run; exec bash"
I get this:
bash: /home/pi/FileServer/Run/: No such file or directory
while it doesn't work for real files. When I type "screen -r" I get just blank bash screen if a file exists.
I can't figure out why it doesn't work. Please explain why it happens and how can I solve this.
Thanks...
After years, I got a similar problem today. This time I was trying to call the screen program inside crontab. I realized I needed absolute paths and correct bash version in crontab as well as in the script itself.
I think I had done a similar mistake 6 years ago. I wrote similar program today, probably, due to different environment variables, script didn't be able to find programs (in my case openvpn). Even program &> output.txt didn't work. The problem was the different bash version not supporting output redirection. I used /usr/sbin/bash -c "command" to cope with it. Also, openvpn is not in the path in that crontab environment, so I had to call it with absolute path (like /usr/sbin/openvpn). Then, it worked.

What is wrong with this .command file?

This is my script to automate the git push of my static blog.
When I run each command one by one in the Terminal, it works. Do I need to add delays, maybe it's going too fast. The pelican command (static website generator) takes quite a lot of time (2 seconds). Is the rest of the script crashing during that?
#!/bin/sh
dropbox
cd blog
pelican . -s /Users/Paul-Arthur/Desktop/Desktop/Dropbox/blog/pelican.conf.py -t subtle
cd output
git add .
git commit -m 'commit'
git push
Updated: Sorry, yeah dropbox is a custom command in my bash_profile (this is not the problem, it works I know ;) ).
Sadly, when I click my script, it executes (but does not work) extremely quickly so I cannot see the errors.
Here is the output from the calepin command. The errors are normal and I expect it to run with that. Do you think that this is the problem? If so what can I do?
familys-imac:blog Paul-Arthur$ pelican . -s /Users/Paul-Arthur/Desktop/Desktop/Dropbox/blog/pelican.conf.py -t subtle
ERROR: Skipping ./articles/aboutme.md: impossible to find informations about 'title'
ERROR: Skipping ./articles/static_sites.md: impossible to find informations about 'title'
familys-imac:blog Paul
It might be due to the « cd » command, since it's not a command, it is a builtin from the shell, and doesn't act like a command.
To debug it, try adding «pwd» command inside your script before and after the «cd» line, to be sure the working directory has change.
It could also be due to the shell you are using, in the shebang (first line of your script), you are using the /bin/sh script. Is it the good one ? When you do it in your shell, you are maybe using another like bash, dash, zsh etc.
To determine that, type that in your current shell :
which `echo $0`
You will get an answer like :
/bin/bash
or something like this. Use this in your shell script :
#!/bin/bash
And try again your script.
Good luck with your project.

MRXVT bash script to change tab title

I am not exactly a pro at BASH Scripting, but I can get by with the basics. I use MRXVT with Cygwin on my windows box (MRXVT is an RXVT Terminal with tabs. RXVT is a Standard Cygwin terminal, but with enhanced features). I found a command to change the tab names for MRXVT:
echo -ne "\e]62;New tab title\a"
It works like a charm. I'm not, however, interested in A)Changing it manually or B)Changing it to a static String
I use a lot of SSH. I'd like the tab title to be username#host[current directory] at any given time.
I'm not sure if I'm supposed to use a trap for this. Frankly, I don't understand how traps work. I guess I could create an ssh alias that pulls the first argument of the ssh command and sets the tab title to that...This would be sufficient, but not preferred.
Do you guys have any ideas?
Found an answer. added
trap 'echo -ne "\e]62;mrxvt: $USER#${HOSTNAME}\007"' DEBUG
to the very end of my .bashrc. I decided I didn't like having the path in my tabs (or titlebar for that matter). Also, I had to add "mrxvt: " to the beginning of the string because of an AHK script that I wrote; it wouldn't work properly otherwise. The full answer to this is:
trap 'echo -ne "\e]62;$USER#${HOSTNAME}[${pwd}]\007"' DEBUG
Again, just add that line to the end of your .bashrc, and you're good to go.
Hope this helps somebody else :)

How can I use mvim to edit my crontab on Mac OS X (10.6.6)

mvim is installed in /usr/local/bin/ but can not be used as either EDITOR or VISUAL:
$ mvim -f # works as expected
$ EDITOR="/usr/local/bin/mvim -f" crontab -e
crontab: /usr/local/bin/mvim -f: No such file or directory
crontab: "/usr/local/bin/mvim -f" exited with status 1
I tried single quotes and using VISUAL instead of EDITOR. Same result. I also tried googling, but apparently the -f flag works just fine for everybody else.
I use Mac OS 10.6.6 and zsh, but the problem is the same in bash.
The problem is crontab expects to be able to run a program called "/usr/local/bin/mvim -f" if you supply that in the EDITOR environment variable.
To get around that, you could write a short shell script. For example, call this one mvimf:
#!/bin/bash
/usr/local/bin/mvim -f "$#"
Then you can run: EDITOR=/usr/local/bin/mvimf crontab -e
I am not sure if this is directly related to the problem you are having but I was seeing a similar error code when trying to edit my crontab. I realized I had a little conflict in my vimrc file related to the pathogen plugin. If you call:
filetype off
when it's already off you can cause problems that will make your Vim exit with errors. Sounds like your issue is fixed already, but since this shows up in searches related to this error code, I thought I would post it here.
Credit goes to commenters on this post - http://tooky.github.com/2010/04/08/there-was-a-problem-with-the-editor-vi-git-on-mac-os-x.html
For those seeing this without mvim, you can use morton-fox's answer for any editor:
EDITOR=/usr/bin/vim crontab -e
Will use vim to open the crontab file

After doing grep and passing it to vim then quitting, why am I experiencing this weird console malfunctioning?

I tried this just now:
grep -RlI "id=\"kw\"" * | xargs vim
That gave me 16 results. It opened the first result in Vim. I made my very first edit and hit :q since I didn't know the shortcut to jump to the next file.
It threw me back to the console ( I am SSHed in to a server ). My console is messed up now. Anything I type I can't see, and anytime I hit enter it seems like it processes the command but the display/view is screwed up so
[meder#linode] is tabbed in on my console, at least halfway. reset does nothing since it seems to have messed up my real console.
Can anyone offer a solution that doesn't have this same downside? Or can anyone provide an explanation for why :qing out of the very first file messed up my console?
Background information: My PC is Debian Ubuntu, I am SSHed into a RHEL box. The files I opened were text/ascii files phtml/php files and not some weird binary files with crazy characters in them.
Here's a screenshot of what happened
EDIT #1: I just typed reset again and it seemed to work. The first reset did not work I think because somehow the console inserted some whitespaceish character inside it? Anyways, I would like an explanation for this weird behaviour.
Try:
vim -o `grep -RlI "id=\"kw\"" * `
From the man page for xargs:
Undefined behavior may occur if utility reads from the standard input.
That line isn't in the Linux man page but it is present on my Mac. If you want to run a program that you intend to read standard input, the usual linux version of xargs will need an argument to read its input from a file:
OPTIONS
--arg-file=file, -a file
Read items from file instead of standard input.
If you use this option, stdin remains unchanged
when commands are run. Otherwise, stdin is
redirected from /dev/null.
Vim is intended to run with both standard input and standard output connected to real (a very rare case these days) or pseudo tty devices. Wierd things will happen if you upset this arrangement.
The fundamental problem with your command was that, with standard input redirected to the pipe, xargs had no way to run a vim with a "normal" standard input. So the vim mode changes and command input were not what you expected.
You can probably fix this by typing a return, a tilde, and a period. This will force your ssh session closed from your end, you can then ssh in again, and run "ps" to check for anything left hung in the background that you should kill(1).
You can use :next or :n to get to the next file to edit. You can also use vim -o to open up all the matching files in different windows in Vim.
Not sure why your console is messed up though. I tried using your command and my console was fine.
Console options are set by stty, so you may want to save its options to a bash variable and restore them after vim exits, like this:
function vim()
{
STTYOPTS="$(stty --save)"
vim "$#"
stty "${STTYOPTS}"
}
But it is probably the better way to use zsh for this task: if you put the only line ttyctl -f into your ~/.zshrc, then zsh will automatically restore terminal options after program exits. ttyctl is a zsh builtin, so you cannot use it from bash.
Other folks covered what happened and what to do about it. As to why, the answer to that probably lies in what input Vim received from the xargs command and tried to execute as if that input came from a terminal. I don't know how to talk terminal, but you can imagine that Vim got some strange commands that crashed it or told it to quit. Similarly unpredictable things happen when you cat a binary file.
Anway, I have another idea. Have you tried using vimgrep to browse a list of files matching a pattern?
:vimgrep /id="kw"/ *
:copen
This greps for id="kw" in all files in the current directory. :copen opens up a window with a list of matches. You can browse that list, clicking enter to jump to a file position.
For more information, see
:help grep
:help :vimgrep
:help :copen
:help quickfix
If you really need that -I option, see
:help :grep
:help 'grepprg'
See also: Vim: Warning: Input is not from a terminal
Try to use ... | xargs sh -c '...' and then read from the controlling terminal device /dev/tty.
echo ~/.profile ~/.bashrc | xargs sh -c 'vim "$#" </dev/tty' dummy_script_name
# based on a tip by Laszlo Ersek on http://unix.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.unix.programmer/2010-03/msg00051.html
#find . -maxdepth 1 -type f | xargs sh -c 'rm -i "$#" </dev/tty' dummy_script_name

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