Problem summary
I'm trying to launch a .sh script via Windows 10 Cygwin (i.e. mintty.exe > bash.exe) but neither .profile, .bash_profile, or .bashrc are loading, which I need to update PATH env variable with Cygwin's bin directory.
Background
I'm trying to launch a script finder.sh:
#!/bin/bash
find .
read
from C:\Users\Bo\Temp\. It has unix line endings and executable bit set.
I have Cygwin installed at C:\Users\Bo\AppData\Local\Programs\cygwin64\. I do not have this path in either System or User Windows' Environment Variables (and I don't want to!). My runcoms all live in this directory under /home/Bo. My .bash_profile (and ATM .bashrc) have an export PATH="/cygdrive/c/Users/Bo/AppData/Local/Programs/cygwin64/bin":${PATH} in them.
I want to launch the script from Windows Explorer. I tried using the bash.exe and mintty.exe in the cygwin64\bin\ folder via Open > Choose another app > More apps > Look for another app on this PC. In either case the mintty window displays:
FIND: Parameter format not correct
meaning the Windows' find command was used not Cygwin's. So I have my script echo $PATH and the Cygwin/bin directory is not in PATH. If I add the proper export PATH statement from above to my own script it works fine. So, now to debug the launcher and runcoms...
I've put echo ${0} statements in .profile, .bash_profile, and .bashrc, none of which trigger which I run the .sh script, they are never run. I've read SO and the mans. I've tried creating a Shortcut to both mintty.exe and bash.exe passing a variety of -l -i -e - commands to each using Properties > Shortcut > Target and they are never run. E.g. running simply [..]\mintty.exe -h always doesn't even leave the window open.
How do I get my script to run in Windows Explorer via Cygwin's mintty.exe/bash.exe, and to read from a runcom to update PATH (to find Cygwin Linux commands, vs. updating Windows Environment Variable)?
Two part fix:
A) set a Windows Environment Variable for BASH_ENV to a .bash_env under your Cygwin HOME, and export the PATH variable to include the Cygwin/bin directory from that file. I cannot find a decent reference for this in Cygwin documentation because it seems to be simply a bash thing, but this variable is what bash looks for when running non login/interactively. Best reference: Cygwin shell doesn't execute .bashrc.
And B) run the .sh with bash.exe from Cygwin/bin using Open With....
ALSO, annoying Windows bug: when you select a program to Open With... your .sh script, it will always run 1x with a CWD from your C:\Windows\System32 directory(?!) and all other times will run fine with the CWD as the directory from your .sh script.
In my Windows directory
C:\Users\jholmes\pichak\analytics
I have run1.ps1 code.
I run wsl.exe, now my pwd is
/mnt/c/WINDOWS/system32
How to point to the first path and execute the script?
In WSL2, using the -File option worked for me:
powershell.exe -File path/to/script.ps1
When running wsl (or wsl.exe) from PowerShell, it should start in the same directory that you were in under PowerShell, just with the Linux version of it. For instance, if you are in PowerShell in C:\Users\jholmes\pichak\analytics, and you run wsl, you should end up in /mnt/c/Users/jholmes/pichak/analytics.
If not, then you may have something in your startup file already like the other answer recommend. You should remove any cd commands from your .bashrc, .zshrc, .profile, .bash_profile, or any other startup file you may have edited.
The wsl command provides a few handy arguments for specifying the starting directory:
wsl ~ will start in your Linux user's home directory (e.g. /home/jholmes)
wsl --cd c:\ will start in /mnt/c (or whatever the equivalent Linux directory is to the Windows version passed in).
wsl --cd \\wsl$\<distroname>\etc will start in your /etc directory (or whatever WSL path you passed in. Note that you will need to specific your distribution name (obtained from wsl -l -v).
Let's say that you are in /home/jholmes, and you want to execute the PowerShell script C:\Users\jholmes\pichak\analytics\run1.ps1. You first need to translate the Windows path to the Linux version:
/mnt/c/Users/jholmes/pichak/analytics/run1.ps
You can then run it via:
powershell.exe /mnt/c/Users/jholmes/pichak/analytics/run1.ps
It's also possible to set up a PowerShell script with a "shebang" line to execute it directly. If you add the following as the first line of run1.ps1:
#!/usr/bin/env -S powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass
Then set it to be executable via chmod +x /mnt/c/Users/jholmes/pichak/analytics/run1.ps, then it becomes a "command" of sorts (technically, an "executable script") that you can execute directly by just typing the fully qualified name of the script at the command line:
/mnt/c/Users/jholmes/pichak/analytics/run1.ps
or
cd /mnt/c/Users/jholmes/pichak/analytics
./run1.ps
There are two ways to go about this:
You can change your working directory to that of your shell script and execute it normally. To do so, follow these steps:
Mount the relevant drive cd /mnt/c/.
Change directories according to the path of the script.
This approach is more of a hack that I use for the sake of convenience. I have created a folder in my Windows storage wherein I store all Ubuntu WSL related files. Say, D:\Ubuntu. To avoid changing the working directory every time you open WSL, you can modify the shell profile file (bashrc, zshrc etc.) to load the relevant directory at the end.
i.e., Add cd /mnt/d/Ubuntu/ at the end of your ~/.zshrc file if you use zsh or the relevant profile file otherwise.
Here is the evidence, that with the WSL2, our software can make the Powershell script encrypted and protected:
See this picture:
And it can detect and kill the process that uses fanotify because we think it can be used by attackers to hide critical file change (it also can find and kill dtrace/strace/stap/bpftrace/debuggers and process that opens /dev/kmem, /dev/mem, /proc/kcore, and the protected process' /proc/pid/mem etc):
This picture shows the encrypted PowerShell script now can detect and kill possible attackers' processes
For me this answer was almost the good one but when running for instance:
powershell.exe -File /mnt/c/path/to/script/script.ps1
I got following error:
The argument '/mnt/c/path/to/script/script.ps1' to the -File parameter does not exist. Provide the path to an existing '.ps1' file as an argument to the -File parameter.
I then have to:
cd /mnt/c/path/to/script
powershell.exe -File script.ps1
To make shortcut for command line function to make it available everywhere in my mac i usually add this line in ~/.bash_profile
To include one terminal execution file, i usually use: alias yiic='~/Script/Yii/1.1.13/yiic'
yiic is terminal execution file.
And then now i have example this from another site: export PATH=${PATH}:/development/sdk/android-sdk-macosx/tools
I understand this command like import all execution file in tools directory, but what is the meaning of ${PATH}: ?
${PATH} is the other folders that your computer will look in. It's automatically set up by your OS. If you do the following command in your Terminal, you'll see all the folders your computer looks in:
echo $PATH
I want to use ls in windows command prompt and make it run the dir command.
How can I do that?
You can solve this question with one simple command:
echo #dir %* > %systemroot%\system32\ls.bat
Make sure you run cmd.exe as admin first if you are on vista and up
You could:
create a batch file called ls.bat and have it contain the dir command only
add the directory where the ls.bat file exists to your PATH environment variable
You could then execute ls from a command prompt.
Its an old question but for the record:
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/coreutils.htm
Gives you ls and a whole lot more!
Easiest way I have found is:
Install Git for Windows
Add the bin directory of Git to your Path variable. Mine was located in C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin.
Start a command prompt and enjoy ls in all its glory.
I have a solution but it's dirty:
Create a file named ls.bat containing only "dir".
Put it in C:\windows\system32 (or any directory in PATH env var).
That (should) works!
Edit: Something more consistent: https://superuser.com/questions/49170/create-an-alias-in-windows-xp
If you have Node.js installed on your system, you can install it from Cash, a library I wrote for Linux commands on Windows:
npm install cash-ls -g
Windows command prompt for Vista/7 will allow NTFS symbolic links, run cmd.exe as administrator then:
mklink ls %System%\dir.exe
Then set up your PATH environment variable to include the location of the link you just created.
If you want more than just the 'ls' command, you should look into cygwin.
EDIT- Just realized dir.exe is not a separate program, so this doesn't really work. But mklink and cygwin are good things to know about.
If you just want to have cmd recognize ls as an alias for dir, you can use the doskey command (from this answer on superuser).
This does not change the original command line parameter handling of the dir command.
+1 on the post above suggesting to install git for windows and add the directory bin to your path variables.
Another way I got touch, ls, and a lot of other UNIX commands working in cmd.exe on my Windows 8 and Windows 7 machines.
Go to the following site to install Cygwin
https://www.cygwin.com/install.html
Install the 32 or 64 bit version for your system. The default settings and packages should include what you need so you don't have to change anything once you get to the packages screen.
After installation, copy the Cygwin folder path to your environment path variables. For example; if you installed cygwin to C:\Cygwin, you will add the following to your environment system path variables:
;C:\Cygwin\bin
On my system I installed the 64bit version and the default folder name and path was C:\cygwin64. So i added the following to my system environment path variables:
;C:\cygwin64\bin
Restart your terminal if it's open. Then type ls and you'll see a directory listing.
See the following if you are not familiar with setting PATH environment variables:
Superuser Link 1
Superuser Link 2
my ls.bat was below
#dir %*
that can transfer cli args
ls /b
ls /w
put it in %windir% or any directory in your %PATH% variable.
Just make sure you save the file with ANSI encoding :)
you could also use cygwin and just use the ls command directly along with all the other unix command line tools you might be used to.
I recommend the following recipe.
Use DOSKEY and $* to create your ls command.
Make the command persistent by recording it in a .bat/.cmd file and add the path of the file to registry.
For example, your command may look like
DOSKEY ls=dir
DOSKEY sublime="C:\Program Files\Sublime Text 2\sublime_text" $*
$* is useful for commands that take on arguments. For example, here I like to be able to do sublime my_code.c.
The registry for cmd is at HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Microsoft -> Command Processor. Create a string valued entry called AutoRun with the full path of the file (not the containing folder) such as %USERPROFILE%\custom_command.cmd. Then each time cmd is run, your command will be loaded!
You can add more useful stuffs to the batch file too. See here for an example template.
Another solution that worked for me is to use UnxUtils, which adds multiple utilities from executable files (including ls, sed, and grep).
To use: download source code. Unzip. Add the UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin path to the Windows PATH variable. Start a new CMD instance.
The most easiest way is
install git
add C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin to your path variable
now you can use ls
Someone who uses Linux Subsystem for Windows could call ls from the Linux bash. The following Command creates the ls Command in System32:
echo #bash -c "ls %*" > %systemroot%\system32\ls.bat
(The Linux Subsystem feature must be enabled/installed first)
You could follow this guide:
https://gist.github.com/vladikoff/38307908088d58af206b
TL;DR: pass /K path/to/custom/init_cmd.bat to your "shell startup" command.
I'm using ConsoleZ as my shell wrapper, so in my case I can find the setup option in "tabs", then I set the shell path to "C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe "/K C:\cmd_init.bat""
like this.
Where C:\cmd_init.bat is the batch script containing my macros, here's what I would go for:
#echo off
doskey ls=dir /b
rem other macro stuff..
Sorry for formatting and other mistakes, this is my first time answering here.
I hope it helps!
Create an alias in .bat or .cmd file using doskey key:
#echo off
title "ls command cmd bar"
doskey ls=echo off $T dir $* $T echo on
Enjoy =)
Surely ls would not work as a unix command for the batches. If you check %1 for -l or -a etc. and all combinations of them, it would work...
Here is my C# source code and binary.
Just add ls.exe somewhere and add the path to the path environment variable.
Right now I'm using MSysGit on Windows 7, which is started from a .bat file, which itself calls bash.exe --login -i to start a shell. At which point it executes the .bashrc file (among others) in the user's home directory. I use this script to setup the environment and cd to a starting directory.
This all works fine. What I would like is to change the .bat file in some way so that bash will execute a custom script at startup so that in that script i could perform a different initialization and cd to a different starting directory. Then I could have two separate .bat files calling each script, then I could make a shortcut to both on the desktop and start whichever I want.
The thing that I'm not sure how to do, is get bash to run a custom init script on startup. Currently the command MSysGit uses is bash.exe --login -i. Is there any way I can modify this to get it to use a custom file? I tried bash.exe --login --rcfile 01.txt -i but that didn't work. Likewise nothing else I tried worked either.
Try it without --login:
bash.exe --rcfile 01.txt -i