text:
# Linux shell tutorial¶

## Course basics¶

Linux Shell tutorial by Science IT at Aalto University.

Abstract: This course consists of two parts: Linux Shell Basics and Linux Shell Scripting. The first covers introductory level shell usage (which also is a backdoor introduction to Linux basics). The second covers actual BASH scripting, using learning by doing.

Linux Shell Basics: 2 sessions x 3h

Linux Shell Scripting: 4 sessions x 3h, session rough schedule 2x1h25m with 10m break in between.

Setting up instructions for the lecturer: Main terminal white&black with the enlarged font size. One small terminal at the top that shows commands to the learners.

• export PROMPT_COMMAND='history -a' # .bashrc or all the terminals one launches commands
• tail -n 0 -F .bash_history

Alternatively, script allows to follow the session even after sshing to a remote host plus command appear as soon as they are run. The regular expression can be adapted to the lecturer’s PS1, this one assumes ]$command. • script -f demos.out # action window • tail -n 1 -f demos.out | while read line; do [[ "$line" =~ \]\$\ ([^ ].+)$ ]] && echo ${BASH_REMATCH[1]}; done Starred exercises (*) are for advanced users who would like further stimulation. Based on • man bash v4.2 (Triton default version in Feb 2018) • Advanced BASH scripting guide [1] • UNIX Power Tools, Shelley Powers etc, 3rd ed, O’Reilly • common sense and 20+ years Linux experience • see also other references in the text ## PART #1. Linux Shell Basics¶ ## 1.1 session: processes and files¶ ### First touch: getting a BASH shell¶ Set yourself up with a BASH shell. Connect to a server or open on your own computer. Examples and demos given during the lecture are done on Triton, though should work on all other Linux installations. • Linux and Mac users: just open a terminal window. If you wish you can login to Triton or any other Aalto Linux server. • Windows users: install PuTTY [2] then SSH to any interactive server at Aalto or your department. ### About the Linux Shell¶ • A shell is what you get when your terminal window is open. It is a command-line (CLI), an interface that interpreters and executes the commands. • The name comes from being a “shell” (layer) around the operating system. It connects and binds all programs together. • This is the basic, raw method of using UNIX-like systems. It may not be used everyday, but it’s really good (necessary) for any type of automation and scripting - as is often needed in science, when connecting pieces together, or when using Triton. • There are multiple shells. This talk is about bash, which is the most common one. zsh is another common shell which is somewhat similar but has some more powerful features. tcsh is another shell from a completely different family (the csh family), which has quite different syntax. • bash is a “Bourne shell”: the “bourne-again shell”. An open source version of original Bourne shell. • It may not be obvious, but the concepts here also apply to Windows programs and will help you understand them. They also apply more directly to Mac programs, because Mac is unix under the hood. ### Basic shell operation¶ • You type things on the screen (standard input or stdin). The shell uses this to make a command. • The shell takes the command, splits it into words, does a lot more preprocessing, and then runs it. • When the command runs, the keyboard (still standard input) goes to the process, output (standard output) goes to the screen. ### What’s a UNIX process?¶ • To understand a shell, let’s first understand what processes are. • All programs are a process: process is a program in action. • Processes have: • Process ID (integer) • Name (command being run) • Command line arguments • input and output: stdin (input, like from keyboard), stdout (output, like to screen), stderr (like stdout) • Return code (integer) when complete • Working directory • environment variables: key-values which get inherited across processes. • These concepts bind together all UNIX programs, even graphical ones. Process listing commands (feel free to try, but we play more with them later): top # (q to quit) htop # (q to quit) pstree pstree$USER
pstree -pau $USER ps auxw  You can find info about your user (try them right away): id echo$SHELL

Is your default shell is a /bin/bash? Login to kosh/taltta and run chsh -s /bin/bash

Another way to find out what SHELL you are running:

### Files and directories¶

Files contain data. They have a name, permissions, owner (user+group), contents, and some other metadata.

Filenames may contain any character except ‘/’, which is reseved as a separator between directory and filenames. The special characters would require quotaion while dealing, with such filenames, though it makes sence to avoid them anyway.

Path can be absolute, starts with ‘/’ or relative, that is related to the current directory.

ls is the standard way of getting information about files. By default it lists your current directory (i.e. pwd), but there are many options:

# list directory content
ls /scratch/work

# list directory files including dot files (i.e. hidden ones)
ls -A ~/directory1

# list all files and directories using long format (permissions, timestamps, etc)
ls -lA ../../directory2

Special notations and expanssions in BASH, can be used with any command:

./, ../, ~, *, ?, [], [!], {abc,xyz}, {1..10}

For the quotation:

'', "", \

Quotation matters  “$USER” vs echo '$USER'

BASH first expand the expanssions and substitute the wildcards, and then execute the command. Could be as complex as:

ls -l ~/[!abc]???/dir{123,456}/filename*.{1..9}.txt

There are a variety of commands to manipulate files/directories:

cd, mkdir, cp, cp -r, rm, rm -r, mv, ln, touch

For file/directory meta information or content type:

ls, stat, file

Note that cd is a shell builtin which change’s the shell’s own working directory. This is the base from which all other commands work: ls by default tells you the current directory. . is the current directory, .. is the parent directory, ~ is your HOME. This is inherited to other commands you run. cd with no options drops your to your $HOME. # copy a directory preserving all the metadata to two levels up cp -a dir1/ ../../ # move all files with the names like filename1.txt, filename_abc.txt etc to dir2/ mv filename*.txt dir2/ # remove a directories/files in the current dir without asking for the confirmation rm -rf dir2/ dir1/ filename* # create an empty file if doesn't exist or update its access/modification time touch filename # create several directories at once mkdir dir3 dir4 dir5 # -or- mkdir dir{3,4,5} # make a link to a target file (hard link by default, -s for symlinks) ln target_file ../link_name  Discover other ls features ls -lX, ls -ltr, ls -Q You may also find useful rename utility implemented by Larry Wall. ### File/directory permissions¶ • Permissions are one of the types of file metadata. • They tell you if you can read a file, write a file, and execute a file/list directory • Each of these for both user, group, and others • Here is a typical permission bits for a file: -rw-r--r-- • In general, it is rwxrwxrwx – read, write, execute/search for user, group, others respectively • ls -l gives you details on files. ### Modifying permissions: the easy part¶ chmod/chown is what will work on all filesystems: chmod u+rwx,g-rwx,o-rwx <files> # u=user, g=group, o=others, a=all # -or- chmod 700 <files> # r=4, w=2, x=1 # recursive, changing all the subdirectories and files at once chmod -R <perm> <directory> # changing group ownership (you must be a group member) chgrp group_name <file or directory>  Extra permission bits: • s-bit: setuid/setgid bit, preserves user and/or group IDs. • t-bit: sticky bit, for directories it prevents from removing file by another user (example /tmp) Setting default access permissions: add to .bashrc umask 027 [8]. The umask is what permissions are removed from any newly created file by default. So umask 027 means “by default, g-w,o-rwx any newly created files”. It’s not really changing the permissions, just the default the operating system will create with. Hint: even though file has a read access the top directory must be searchable before external user or group will be able to access it. Sometimes on Triton, people do chmod -R o-rwx$WRKDIR; chmod o+x $WRKDIR. Execute (x) without read (r) means that you can access files inside if you know the exact name, but not list the directory. The permissions of the files themselves still matter. ### Modifying permissions: advanced (*)¶ Access Control Lists (ACLs) are advanced access permissions. They don’t work everywhere, for example mostly do no work on NFS mounted directories. They are otherwise supported on ext4, lustre, etc (thus works on Triton$WRKDIR).

• In “normal” unix, files have only “owner” and “group”, and permissions for owner/group/others. This can be rather limiting.
• Access control lists (ACLS) are an extension that allows an arbitrary number of users and groups to have access rights to files. The basic concept is that you have:
• ACLs don’t show up in normal ls -l output, but there is an extra plus sign: -rw-rwxr--+. ACLs generally work well, but there are some programs that won’t preserve them when you copy/move files, etc.
• POSIX (unx) ACLs are controlled with getfacl and setfacl
• Allow read access for a user setfacl -m u:<user>:r <file_or_dir>
• Allow read/write access for a group setfacl -m g:<group>:rw <file_or_dir>
• Revoke granted access setfacl -x u:<user> <file_or_dir>
• See current stage getfacl <file_or_dir>

File managers on Triton we have installed Midnight Commander – mc

Advanced file status to get file meta info stat <file_or_dir>

[Lecture notes: hands-on ~30 mins till the end of this session]

Exercise 1.1.2: mkdir in your $HOME (or $WRKDIR if on Triton), cd there and touch a file. Rename it. Make a copy and then remove the original. What does touch do? list all files in /usr/bin and /usr/sbin that start with non-letter characters with one ls command (*) list with ls dot files/directories only (by default it lists all files/directories but not those that begin with .). “dotfiles” are a convention where filenames that begin with . such as .bashrc are considered “hidden”. Explore stat file output. What metadata do you find? Try to stat files of different types (regular file, directory, link, special device in /dev, named pipe) create a directory, use chmod to allow user and any group members full access and no access for others (*) change that directory group ownership with chown or chgrp (any group that you belong to is fine), set s-bit for the group and apply t-bit to a directory, check that the upper directory has o+x bit set: now you should have a private working space for your group. Tip: see groups that you are a member of id -Gn ls -ld tells you that directory has permissions rwxr-Sr--. Do group members have access there? create a directory (in WRKDIR if on Triton and in /tmp if on any other server), use setfacl to set its permissions so that only you and some user/group of your choice would have access to it. (*) create a directory and a subdirectory in it and set their permissions to 700 with one command.

## 1.2 session: interactive usage¶

### find¶

• find is a very unixy program: it finds files, but in the most flexible way possible.
• It is a amazingly complicated program
• It is a number one in searching files in shell

With no options, just recursively lists all files starting in current directory:

find

The first option gives a starting directory:

find /etc/

Other search options: by modification/accessing time, by ownership, by access type, joint conditions, case-insensitive, that do not match, etc [5] [6]:

# -or-  'find ~ $WRKDIR -name file.txt' one can search more than one dir at once find ~ -name file.txt # look for jpeg files in the current dir only find . -maxdepth 1 -name '*.jpg' -type f # find all files of size more than 10M and less than 100M find . -type -f -size +10M -size -100M # find everything that does not belong to you find ~ ! -user$USER | xargs ls -ld

# open all directories to group members
# tip: chmod applies x-bit to directories automatically
find . -type d -exec chmod g+rw {} \;

# find all s-bitted executable binaries
find /usr/{bin,sbin} -type f -perm -u+x,u+s

# find and remove all files older than 7 days
find path/dir -type f -mtime +7 -exec rm -f {} \;

Find syntax is actually an entire boolean logic language given on the command line: it is a single expression evaluated left to right with certain precedence. There are match expressions and action expressions. Thus, you can get amazingly complex if you want to. Take a look at the ‘EXAMPLES’ section in man find for the comprehensive list of examples and explanations.

find on Triton On Triton’s WRKDIR you should use lfs find. This uses a raw lustre connection to make it more efficient than accessing every file. It has somewhat limited abilities as comparing to GNU find. For details man lfs on Triton.

Fast find – locate Another utility that you may find useful locate <pattern>, but on workstations only. This uses a cached database of all files, and just searches that database so it is much faster.

Too many arguments error solved with the find ... | xargs

### File archiving¶

tar is the de-facto standard tool for saving many files or directories into a single archive file. Archive files may have extenssions .tar, .tar.gz etc depending on compression.

# create tar archive gzipped on the way
tar -caf arhive_name.tar.gz directory_to_be_archived/

# extract files
tar -xaf archive_name.tar.gz -C path/to/directory

Other command line options: r - append files to the end of an archive, t - list archive content. f is for the filename, and a selects the compression method based on the archive file suffix (in this example gzip, due to the .gz suffix. Without compression files/directories are simply packed as is.

# xz has better compression ratio than gzip, but is very slow
tar -caf archive_file.tar.xz dir1/ dir2/

Individual files can be compressed directly, e.g. with gzip:

# file.gz is created, file is removed in the process.
gzip file
# Uncompress
gunzip file.gz

### Transferring files (+archiving on the fly)¶

For Triton users the ability to transfer files to/from Triton is essential. Same applicable to file transfer between your home workstation and kosh etc.

Several use cases:

# transferring a file from your HOME on kosh to your home worstaion

# transferring files from Triton to your Aalto workstation

(*) Another use case, copying to Triton, or making a directory backup with rsync:

rsync -urlptDxv --chmod=Dg+s somefile triton.aalto.fi:/scratch/work/LOGIN_NAME  # copy a file to $WRKDIR rsync -urlptDxv --chmod=Dg+s dir1/ triton.aalto.fi:/scratch/work/LOGINNAME/dir1/ # sync two directories  (*) Transferring and archiving your Triton data on the fly to some other place: # login to Triton cd$WRKDIR
tar czf - path/to/dir | ssh kosh.aalto.fi 'cat > path/to/archive/dir/archive_file.tar.gz'

[Lecture notes: this session has three theory+excersise hands-ons, roughly 40+20 minutes each]

export CDPATH=$HOME:$WRKDIR:$WRKDIR/project  ### Initialization files and configuration¶ • When the shell first starts (when you login), it reads some files. These are normal shell files, and it evaluates normal shell commands to set configuration. • You can always test things in your own shell and see if it works before putting it in the config files. Highly recommended! • You customize your environment means setting or expanding aliases, variables, functions. • The config files are: • .bashrc (when SSH) and • .bash_profile (interactive login to a workstation) • they are often a symlink from one to another • To get an idea how complicated .bashrc can be take a look at <https://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/sample-bashrc.html> One of the things to play with: command line prompt defined in PS1 [4] PS1="[\d \t $email protected]\h:\w ] "  For special characters see PROMPTING at man bash. To make it permanent, should be added to .bashrc like export PS1. ### Creating/editing/viewing file¶ • A text editor edits files as ASCII. These are your best friend. In fact, text files are your best friend: rawest, most efficient, longest-lasting way of storing data. • “pager” is a generic term for things that view files or data. Linux command line text editors like: • nano - simplest • vim - minimal. To save&quit, ESC :wq • emacs - or the simplest one nano. To save&quit: Ctrl-x Ctrl-c To view contents of a file in a scrollable fashion: less Quick look at the text file cat filename.txt (dumps everything to screen- beware of non-text binary files or large files!) Other quick ways to add something to a file (no need for an editor) echo 'Some sentence, or whatever else 1234567!-+>#' > filename.txt cat > filename2.txt to finish typing and write written to the file, press enter, then Ctrl-d. The best text viewer ever less -S (to open a file in your EDITOR, hit v, to search through type /search_word) Watching files while they grow tail -n 0 -f <file> Try: add above mentioned export PS1 to .bashrc. Remember source .bashrc to enable changes Exercise 1.2.2: link .bash_profile to .bashrc. Tip: see ln command from the previous session. open ~/.bashrc for eiditng and add there CDPATH example from above, customize it for your needs and test. Tip: remember source ~/.bashrc. add umask 027 to .bashrc, try creating files. Tip: umask -S prints your current setting. customize a prompt PS1 and add it to your .bashrc, make sure is has a current directory name and the hostname in it in the format hostname:/path/to/current/dir. Hint: save the original PS1 like oldPS1=PS1 to be able to recover it any time. (*) Set some default options for the less program in your bashrc. Examples: case-insensitive searching, long prompt, wrapping lines. ### Utilities: the building blocks of shell¶ • wide range of all kind of utilities available in Linux • shell is a glue to bind them all together • commandline is often a long list of those utilities joint into pipe that pass output of each other further cat; sort; tr; cut; head; date; tail; wc; grep; uniq; paste; find # and many others  We catch many of them on the way. ### Input and output: redirect and pipes¶ • Programs can display something: echo this is some output or cat • Programs can take some input: e.g. less by default displays input if no filename given. • cat /etc/bashrc dumps that file to stardard output (stdout) • cat /etc/bashrc | less gives it to less on standard input (stdin) Pipe: output of the first command as an input for the second one command_a | command_b:  # send man page to a default printer man -t ls | lpr # see what files/directories use the most space, including hidden ones du -hs * .[!.]* | sort -h # count a number of logged in users w -h | wc -l # to remove all carriage returns and Ctrl-z characters from a Windows file cat win.txt | tr -d '\15\32' > unix.txt # to list all matching commands history | grep -w 'command name' # print all non-printable characters as well ls -lA | cat -A # print the name of the newest file in the directory (non-dot) ls -1tF | grep -v -E '*/|@' | head -1  Redirects: • Like pipes, but send data to/from files instead of other processes. • Replace a file: command > file.txt • Append to a file: command >> file.txt (be careful you do not mix them up!) • Redirect file as STDIN: command < file (in case program accepts STDIN only) echo Hello World > hello.txt ls -lH >> current_dir_ls.txt # join two files into one cat file1 file2 > file3 # extract user names and store them to a file getent passwd | cut -d: -f1,5 > users # join file1 and 2 lines one by one using : as a delimiter paste -s -d : file1 file2 > file3 # go through file1 and replace spaces with a new line mark, then output to file2 tr -s ' ' '\n' < file1 > file2 # -or- in more readable format cat file1 | tr -s ' ' '\n' > file2  This is the unix philosophy and the true power of the shell. The unix philosophy is a lot of small, specialized, good programs which can be easily connected together. The beauty of the cli are elegant one-liners i.e. list of commands executed in one line. To dump output of all commands at once: group them. { command1; command2; } > filename # commands run in the current shell as a group ( command1; command2; ) > filename # commands run in external shell as a group  Coreutils by GNU You may find many other useful commands at https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html ### Pipelines: ;, &&, and ||¶ • You can put several commands on the same line using different separators. • The shell term for this is pipelines. Chaining: command_a ; command_b: always runs both commands. Remember exit codes? In shell, 0=success and anything 1-255=failure. Note that this is opposite of normal Boolean logic! The && and || are short-circuit (lazy) boolean operators. They can be used for quick conditionsals. • command_a && command_b • If command_a is successful, also run command_b • final exit code is last evaluated one, which has the role of Boolean and. • command_a || command_b • If command_a is not successful, also run command_b • final exit code is that of the last evaluated command, which has the role of Boolean or. Hint command_a && command_b || command_c Try: cd /nonexistent_dir && ls /nonexistent_dir compare with cd /nonexistent_dir; ls /nonexistent_dir Try: ping -c 1 8.8.8.8 > /dev/null && echo online || echo offline ### grep¶ Later on you’ll find out that grep is one of the most useful commands you ever discover on Linux (except for all the other most useful commands ever) grep <pattern> <filename> # grep lines that match <pattern> -or- command | grep <pattern> # grep lines from stdin  # search all the files in the dir/ and its subdirs, to match the word 'is', case insensitive grep -R -iw 'is' dir/ # grep all lines from *command* output, except those that have 'comment' in it *command* | grep -v comment # displaying 2 extra lines before and after the match (-A just after, -B just before) grep -C 2 'search word' file # counts the number of matches grep -c <pattern> file(s) # shows only the matched part of the string (by default grep shows whole line) grep -o <pattern> file(s) # accepts way more advanced regular expressions as a search pattern grep -E <extended_regexpr> file(s)  For details on what <pattern> could be, look for REGULAR EXPRESSIONS at man grep. Some examples: # grep emails to a list grep -Eio "\b[a-z0-9._%+-][email protected][a-z0-9.-]+\.[a-z]{2,6}\b" file.txt # grep currently running firefox processes ps auxw | grep firefox # grep H1 and H2 header lines out of HTML file grep "<[Hh][12]>" file.html  Exercise 1.2.3: make a pipe that counts number of files/directories (including dot files) in your directory grep directories out of ls -l grep all but blank lines in triton:/etc/bashrc expand the previous one to filter out commented lines also (line starts with #). Note that lines may have spaces before # mark. count unique logged in users on triton. Tip: w or users gives you a list of all currently login users, many of them have several sessions open. (*) Play with the commands grep, cut: find at least two ways to extract IP addresses only out of /etc/hosts. Tip: grep has -o option, thus one can build a regular expression that will grab exactly what you need. (*) Using pipes and commands echo/tr/uniq, find doubled words out of My Do Do list: Find a a Doubled Word. Any easier way to do it? ## PART #2. Linux Shell Scripting¶ ## Quoting, substitutions, aliases¶ Last time, we focused on interactive things from the command line. Now, we build on that some and end up with making our own scripts. ### Command line processing and quoting¶ So, shell is responsible for interpreting the commands you type. Executing commands might seem simple enough, but a lot happens between the time you press RETURN and time your computer actually does something. • When you enter a command line, it is one string. • When a program runs, it always takes an array of strings (the argv in C, sys.argv in Python, for example). How do you get from one string to an array of strings? Bash does a lot of processing. • The simplest way of looking at it is everything separated by spaces, but actually there is more: variable substitution, command substitution, arithmetic evaluation, history evaluation, etc. The partial order of operations is (don’t worry about exact order: just realize that the shell does a lot of different things in same particular order): • history expansion • brace expansion ({1..9}) • parameter and variable expansion (VAR, {VAR}) • command substitution (()) • arithmetic expansion (((1+1))) • word splitting • pathname expansion (*, ?, [a,b]) • redirects and pipes One thing we will start to see is shell quoting. There are several types of quoting (we will learn details of variables later): # Double quotes: disable all other characters except , ', \ echo "SHELL" # Single quotes: disable all special characters echo 'SHELL' # backslash disables the special meaning of the next character ls name\ with\ space  By special characters we mean: # & * ? [ ] ( ) { } = | ^ ; < >  " ' \  There are different rules for embedding quoting in other quoting. Sometimes a command passes through multiple layers and you need to really be careful with multiple layers of quoting! This is advanced, but just remember it. echo 'What's up? how much did you get ?' # wrong, ' can not be in between '' echo "What's up? how much did you get ?" # wrong, is a variable in this case echo "What's up? how much did you get \\?" # correct echo "What's up? how much did you get "''"?" # correct  At the end of the line \ removes the new line character, thus the command can continue to a next line: ping -c 1 8.8.8.8 > /dev/null && \ echo online || \ echo offline  ### Substitute a command output¶ • Command substitutions execute a command, take its stdout, and place it on the command line in that place. (command) or alternatively command. Could be a command or a list of commands with pipes, redirections, grouping, variables inside. The () is a modern way, supports nesting, works inside double quotes. To understand what is going on in these, run the inner command first. # get the latest modified file to a variable newest=(ls -F1t | grep -v */ | head -1) # save current date to a variable today=(date +%Y-%m-%d) # create a new file with current timestamp in the name (almost unique filename) touch file.(date +%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S) # archive current directory content, where new archive name is based on current path and date tar czf (basename (pwd)).(date +%Y-%m-%d).tar.gz . # counting directories and files on the fly echo Number of directories (ls -lA | grep ^d | wc -l) files (ls -lA | grep ^- | wc -l)  This is what makes BASH powerful! Note: (command || exit 1) will not have an effect you expect, command is executed in a subshell, exiting from inside a subshell, closes the subshell only not the parent script. Subshell can not modify its parent shell environment, though can give back exit code or signal it: # this will not work, echo still will be executed dir=nonexistent echo (ls -l dir || exit 1) # this will not work either, since || evaluates echo's exit code, not ls echo (ls -l dir) || exit 1 # this will work, since assignment a comman substitution to a var returns exit # code of the executed command var=(ls -l dir) || exit 1 echo var  ### More about redirection, piping and process substitution¶ STDIN, STDOUT and STDERR: reserved file descriptors 0, 1 and 2. They always there whatever process you run. /dev/null file (actually special operating system device) that discards all data written to it. # discards STDOUT only command > /dev/null # discards both STDOUT and STDERR command &> /dev/null command > /dev/null 2>&1 # same as above, old style notation # redirects outputs to different files command 1>file.out 2>file.err # takes STDIN as an input and outputs STDOUT/STDERR to a file command < input_file &> output_file  Note, that &> and >& will do the same, redirect both STDOUT and STDERR to the same place, but the former syntax is preferable. # what happens if 8.8.8.8 is down? How to make the command more robust? ping -c 1 8.8.8.8 > /dev/null && echo online || echo down # takes a snapshot of the directory list and send it to email, then renames the file ls -l > listing && { mail -s "ls -l (pwd)" [email protected] < listing; mv listing listing.(date +"%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M"); } # a few ways to empty a file > filename cat /dev/null > filename # read file to a variable var=(< path/to/file) # extreme case, if you can't get the program to stop writing to the file... ln -s /dev/null filename  Pipes are following the same rules with respect to standard output/error. In order to pipe both STDERR and STDOUT |&. If ! preceeds the command, the exit status is the logical negation. tee in case you still want output to a terminal and to a file command | tee filename But what if you need to pass to another program results of two commands at once? Or if command accepts file as an argument but not STDIN? One can always do this in two steps, run commands and save results to file(s) and then use them with the another command. Though BASH helps to make even this part easier (or harder), the feature called Process Substitution, looks like <(command) or >(command), no spaces in between parentheses and < signs. It emulates a file creation out of command output and place it on a command line. The command can be a pipe, pipeline etc. The actual file paths substituted are /dev/fd/<n>. The file paths can be passed as an argument to the another command or just redirected as usual. # BASH creates a file that has an output of *command2* and pass it to *command1* # file descriptor is passed as an argument, assuming command1 can handle it command1 <(command2) # same but redirected (like: cat < filename) command1 < <(command2) # in the same way one can substitute results of several commands or command groups command1 <(command2) <(command3 | command4; command5) # example: comparing listings of two directories diff <(ls dir1) <(ls dir2) # and vice versa, *command1* output is redirected as a file to *command2* command1 > >(command2) # essentially, in some cases pipe and process substituion do the same ls -s | cat cat <(ls -s)  ### Aliases¶ • Alias is nothing more than a shortcut to a long command sequence • With alias one can redefine an existing command or name a new one • Alias will be evaluated only when executed, thus it may have all the expansions and substitutions one normally has on the cli • They are less flexible than functions which we will discuss next # your own listing command alias l='ls -lAF' # shortcut for checking space usage alias space='du -hs .[!.]* * | sort -h' # prints in the compact way login/group alias me="echo \"'(id -un)' '(id -gn)'\"" # redefine rm alias rm='rm -i' alias rm='rm -rf'  Aliases go to .bashrc and available later by default (really, anywhere they can be read by the shell). [Lecturer’s notes: about 40 mins joint hands-on session + break] Exercise 2.1: Define above mentioned ping ... command as an alias (you name it) in ~/.bashrc once you verify it works. Then source ~/.bashrc and try the new alias. Tip: any path that starts with ~ means the file or directory is in your HOME. Create a directory structure, that has five directories and five subdirs in each directory like dir1/subdir1, dir1/subdir2, … dir5/subdir5 with one command. Tip: use Brace expansions and see mkdir -p ... Use command substitution to create an empty file with the date the in the name, like file.YYYY-MM-DD.out. Tip: investigate date +"..." output format. Create a one-liner with ls, echo, redirections etc that takes a file path and says whether this file/directory exists or not. Redirect STDOUT/STDERR to /dev/null. See our ping -c 8.8.8.8 ... as an example. Use any of the earlier created files to compare there modification times with stat -c '%y' filename, diff and the process substitution. (*) Make a one-liner that copies a small dir (small (!), to save time/traffic) from your Triton’s WRKDIR (or any other remote server) and sends confirmation to your email with the directory listing attached but use process substitution instead of saving directory listing to a file. Tip: use examples in the text. (*) Using pipes and commands echo, tr, uniq, find doubled words out of My Do Do list: Find a a Doubled Word. (*) Pick up /scratch/scip/BASH/windows.txt file and convert it to UNIX format using tr and redirects only. Tip: remind first session examples. (*) Using find, duplicate current directory tree (to some other dir, only tree, no content) (*) Join find and grep power and find all the files in /{usr/,}{bin,sbin} that have ‘#!/bin/bash’ in it ## Variables, functions, environment¶ ### Your ~/bin and PATH¶ The PATH is an environment variable. It is a colon delimited list of directories that your shell searches through when you enter a command. Binaries are at /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin etc. The best place for your own is ~/bin.: # add to .bashrc export PATH="PATH:HOME/bin" # after you have your script written, set +x bit and run it chmod +x ~/bin/script_name.sh script_name.sh  You can find where a program is using which or type -a, we recommend the later one: type -a ls # a binary type -a cd # builtin  Other options: # +x bit and ./ chmod +x script.sh ./script.sh # that works if script.sh has #!/bin/bash as a first line # with no x bit bash script.sh # this will work even without #!/bin/bash  Extension is optional note that .sh extension is optional, script may have any name ### Functions as part of your environment¶ Alias is a shortcut to a long command, while function is a piece of programming that has logic and can accept input parameters. Functions can be defined on-the-fly from the cli, or can go to a file. Let us set ~/bin/functions and collect everything useful there.: # cd to the directory and lists it at once # can be run as: lcd <path/to/directory> lcd() { cd 1 ls -FlA } # in one line, note spaces and ; delimiters lcd() { cd 1; ls -FlA; } # -or- in a full format function lcd { cd 1; ls -FlA; }  By now function has been defined, to run it, one has to invoke it.: source ~/bin/functions lcd dir1  The function refers to passed arguments by their position (not by name), that is 1, 2, and so forth: func_name arg1 arg2 arg3 # will become 1 2 3  Functions in BASH have return but it only returns the exit code. Useful in cases where you want to ‘exit’ the function and continue to the rest of the script. By default functions’ variables are in the global space, once chaged in the function is seen everywhere else. local can be used to localize the vars. Compare: var=2; f() { var=3; }; f; echo var var=2; f() { local var=3; }; f; echo var  If you happened to build a function in an alias way, redefining a command name while using that original command inside the function, you need to type command before the name of the command, like: rm() { command rm -i "[email protected]"; }  here you avoid internal loops (forkbombs). Exporting a function with export -f function_name lets you pass a function to a sub-shell, by storing that function in a environment variable. Helpful when you want to use it within a command substitution, or any other case that launches a subshell, like find ... -exec bash -c 'function_name {}' \;. ### Variables¶ In shell, variables define your environment. Common practice is that environmental vars are written IN CAPITAL: HOME, SHELL, PATH, PS1, RANDOM. To list all defined variables printenv. All variables can be used or even redefined. No error if you call an undefined var, it is just considered to be empty: # assign a variable, note, no need for ; delimiter var1=100 var2='some string' # calling a variable is just putting a dollar sign in a front echo "var1 is var1" # re-assign to another var var3=var1 # when appending a variable, it is considered to be a string var+=<string>/<integer> var1+=50 # var1 is now 10050 var2+=' more' # var2 is 'some string more' # we come later to how to deal with the integers (Arithmetic Expanssions (()) below)  There is no need to declare things in advance: there is flexible typing. In fact, you can access any variable, defined or not. However, you can still declare things to be of a certain type if you need to: declare -r var=xyz # read-only declare -i var # must be treated as an integer, 'man bash' for other declare options  BASH is smart enough to distinguish a variable inline without special quoting: dir=HOME/dir1 fname=file fext=xyz echo "dir/fname.fext"  though if variable followed by a number or a letter, you have to explicitly separate it with the braces syntax: echo {dir}2/{file}abc.fext  Built-in vars: • ? exit status of the last command • current shell pid • # number of input parameters • 0 running script name, full path • FUNCNAME function name being executed, [ note: actually an array {FUNCNAME[*]} ] • 1, 2 … input parameter one by one (function/script) • “@” all input parameters as is in one line f() { echo -e " number of input params: #\n input params: [email protected]\n shell process id: \n script name: 0\n function name: FUNCNAME"; return 1; }; f arg1 arg2; echo "exit code: ?"  What if you assing a variable to a variable like: var2='something' var1=\var2 echo var1 # will return 'var2' literally # BASH provides built-in 'eval' command that reads the string then re-evaluate it # if variables etc found, they are given another chance to show themselves eval echo var1 # returns 'something'  In more realistic examples it is often used to compose a command string based on input parameters or some conditionals and then evaluate it at very end. ### Magic of BASH variables¶ BASH provides wide abilities to work with the vars “on-the-fly” with {var...} like constructions. This lets you do simple text processing easily. These are nice, but are easy to forget so you will need to look them up when you need them. • Assign a var with default value if not defined: {var:=value} • Returns var value or a default value if not defined: {var:-value} • Print an error_message if var empty: {var:?error_message} • Extract a substring: {var:offset:length}, example var=abcde; echo {var:1:3} returns ‘bcd’ • Variable’s length: {#var} • Replace beginning part: {var#prefix} • Replace trailing part: {var%suffix} • Replace pattern with the string: {var/pattern/string} • Modify the case of alphabetic characters: {var,,} for lower case or {var^^} for upper case # will print default_value, which can be a variable var=''; echo {var:-default_value} var1=another_value; var=''; echo {var:-var1} # assign the var if it is not defined # note that we use ':' no operation command, to avoid BASH's 'command not found' errors : {var:=default_value} # will print 'not defined' in both cases var=''; echo {var:?not defined} var=''; err='not defined'; echo {var:?err} # will return 'love you' var='I love you'; echo {var:2:8} # will return 15, that is a number of characters var='I love you too!'; echo {#var} # returns file.ext var=26_file.ext; echo {var#[0-9][0-9]_} # in both cases returns 26_file var=26_file.ext; echo {var%.ext} var=26_file.ext; echo {var%.[a-z][a-z][a-z]} # returns 'I hate you' var='I love you'; echo {var/love/hate} # other options for substitutions var=' some text '; echo {var/# /} # returns without the first space echo {var/% /} # without the last space echo {var// /} # without spaces at all  Except for the := the variable remains unchanged. If you want to redefine a variable: var='I love you'; var={var/love/hate}; echo var # returns 'I hate you'  BASH allows indirect referencing, consider: var1='Hello' var2=var1 echo var2 # returns text 'var1' echo {!var2} # returns 'Hello' instead of 'var1'  To address special characters: # replacing all tabs with the spaces in the var var={var//'\t'/ }  [Lecturer’s note: ~20 minutes for the hands-on exercises. Solution examples can be given at very end.] Exercise 2.2: Expand lcd() function to have WRKDIR as a default directory in case function is invoked without any input parameter. Expand the Exersice 2.1’s ls ... && echo .. || echo example, make a function that check any file/directory existense given as an argument, like checkexist path/to/file. If no argument given, function must return an error message “File or directory not found”. Implement a spaceusage() function with du ... | sort ... (see Aliases part examples) that takes directory path as an argument, and if missing uses current directory. Using find utility, implement a ‘fast find’ function ff word. The function should return a long listing (ls -ldA) of any file or directory names that contain the . Make search case insensitive. Note: your newly ceated functions should go to ~/bin/functions file. Write two functions get_filename() and get_extension(). Both should accept a full filename like path/to/filename.ext of any length and return filename or ext correspondingly. Extenssion can be of any length. Function should handle missing argument case correctly. Expand get_filename() so that it would accept extenssion pattern as a second argument (if given) and return filename out of path/to/filename.tar.gz or alike. I.e. get_filename path/to/filename.tar.gz tar.gz (*) By now one should be able to explain: :() { :|:&; };:. & in this case sends process to background. [WARNING: it is a forkbomb] (*) On Triton write a function that lfs find all the dirs/files at WRKDIR that do not belong to your group and fix the group ownership. Use find ... | xargs. Tip: on Triton at WRKDIR your username USER and group name are the same. On any other filesystem, (id -gn) returns your group name. One can (*) Expand the function above to set group’s s-bit on all the WRKDIR directories. ## Conditionals¶ ### Tests: [[ ]]¶ • [[ expression ]] returns 0=true/success or 1=false/failure depending on the evaluation of the conditional expression. • [[ expression ]] is a new upgraded variation on test (also known as [ ... ]), all the earlier examples with single brackets that one can find online will also work with double • Inside the double brackets it performs tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion, arithmetic expansion, command substitution, process substitution, and quote removal • Conditional expressions can be used to test file attributes and perform string and arithmetic comparisons Selected examples file attributes and variables testing: • -f file true if is a file • -r file true if file exists and readable • -d dir true if is a directory • -e file true if file/dir/etc exists in any form • -z string true if the length of string is zero (always used to check that var is not empty) • -n string true if the length of string is non-zero • file1 -nt file2 true if file1 is newer (modification time) • many more others # checks that file exists [[ -f file ]] && echo file exists || { echo error; exit 1; } # check that directory does not exist before creating one [[ -d dir ]] || mkdir dir  Note that integers have their own construction (( expression )) (we come back to this), though [[ ]] will work for them too. The following are more tests: • == strings or integers are equal (= also works) • != strings or integers are not equal • string1 < string2 true if string1 sorts before string2 lexicographically • > vice versa, for integers greater/less than • string =~ pattern matches the pattern against the string • && logical AND, conditions can be combined • || logical OR • ! negate the result of the evaluation • () group conditional expressions In addition, double brackets inherit several operands to work with integers mainly: • -eq, -ne, -lt, -le, -gt, -ge equal to, not equal to, less than, less than or equal to, greater than, or greater than or equal # the way to check input arguments, if no input, exit (in functions # 'return 1'). Remember, # is special variable for number of arguments. [[ # -eq 0 ]] && { echo Usage: 0 arguments; exit 1; } aalto=Aalto hy=HY utu=UTU # the result will be true (0), since Aalto sorts before HY [[ aalto < hy ]]; echo ? # though with a small modification, the way around is going to be true also [[ ! aalto > hy ]]; echo ? # this will return also true, here we compare lengths, Aaaaalto has a longer... name [[ {#aalto} -gt {#hy} ]]; echo ? # true, since Aalto in both cases sorted before HY and UTU [[ aalto < hy && aalto < utu ]]; echo ? # false, since both fail [[ ( aalto < hy && aalto > utu ) || hy > utu ]]; echo ? # note that [[ ]] always require spaces before and after brackets  # Some use cases for [[ ]] # if dir exists and is not empty, then do smth d=path/to/dir; [[ -d d && (ls -A d) ]] && tar caf ... # append PATH d=path/to/bin; [[ -d d && ! (echo PATH|grep d) ]] && export PATH=PATH:d  The matching operator =~ brings more opportunities, because regular expressions come in play. Even more: matched strings in parentheses assigned to {BASH_REMATCH[]} array elements! • Regular expressions (regexs) are basically a mini-language for searching within, matching, and replacing text in strings. • They are extremely powerful and basically required knowledge in any type of text processing. • Yet there is a famous quote by Jamie Zawinski: “Some people, when confronted with a problem, think ‘I know, I’ll use regular expressions.’ Now they have two problems.” This doesn’t mean regular expressions shouldn’t be used, but used carefully. When writing regexs, start with a small pattern and slowly build it up, testing the matching at each phase, or else you will end up with a giant thing that doesn’t work and you don’t know why and can’t debug it. There are also online regex testers which help build them. • While the basics (below) are the same, there are different forms of regexs! For example, the grep program has regular regexs, but grep -E has extended. The difference is mainly in the special characters and quoting. Basically, check the docs for each language (Perl, Python, etc) you want to use regexs in. Selected operators: • . matches any single character • ? the preceding item is optional and will be matched, at most, once • * the preceding item will be matched zero or more times • + the preceding item will be matched one or more times • {N} the preceding item is matched exactly N times • {N,} the preceding item is matched N or more times • {N,M} the preceding item is matched at least N times, but not more than M times • [abd], [a-z] a character or a range of characters/integers • ^ beginning of a line •  the end of a line • () grouping items, this what comes to {BASH_REMATCH[@]} # match an email email='jussi.meika[email protected]'; regex='(.*)@(.*)'; [[ "email" =~ regex ]]; echo {BASH_REMATCH[*]} # a number out of the text txt='Some text with #1278 in it'; regex='#([0-9]+ )'; [[ "txt" =~ regex ]] && echo {BASH_REMATCH[1]} || echo do not match # case insensitive matching var1=ABCD, var2=abcd; [[ {var1,,} =~ {var2,,} ]] && ...  For case insesitive matching, alternatively, in general, set shopt -s nocasematch (to disable it back shopt -u nocasematch) ### Conditionals: if/elif/else¶ Yes, we have [[ ]] && ... || ... but scripting style is more logical with if/else construction: if condition; then command1 elif condition; then command2 else command3 fi  At the condition place can be anything what returns an exit code, i.e. [[ ]], command/function, an arithmetic expression (( )), or a command substitution. # to compare two input strings/integers if [[ "1" == "2" ]] then echo The strings are the same else echo The strings are different fi # checking command output if ping -c 1 8.8.8.8 &> /dev/null; then echo Online elif ping -c 1 127.0.0.1 &> /dev/null; then echo Local interface is down else echo No external connection fi # check input parameters if [[ # == 0 ]]; then echo Usage: 0 input_arg exit 1 fi ... the rest of the code  Expanding tarit.sh to a script #!/bin/bash # usage: tarit.sh <dirname> d=1 # if dirname is given, we archive it if [[ -d d ]]; then tar caf (basename d).(date +%Y-%m-%d).tar.gz d elif [[ -z d ]]; then tar caf (basename (pwd)).(date +%Y-%m-%d).tar.gz . else echo d does not exist fi  ### case¶ Another option to handle flow, instead of nested ifs, is case. read -p "Do you want to create a directory (y/n)? " yesno # expects user input case yesno in y|yes) dir='dirname' echo Creating a new directory dir mkdir dir cd dir ;; n|no) echo Proceeding in the current dir (pwd) ;; *) echo Invalid response exit 1 ;; esac # yesno can be replaced with {yesno,,} to convert to a lower case on the fly  In the example above, we introduce read, a built-in command that reads one line from the standard input or file descriptor. case tries to match the variable against each pattern in turn. Understands patterns rules like *, ?, [], |. Here is the case that could be used as an idea for your ~/.bashrc host=(hostname) case host in myworkstation*) export PRINTER=mynearbyprinter # making your promt smiling when exit code is 0 :) PS1='(if [[ ? == 0 ]]; then echo "\[\e[32m$:)"; else echo "$\e[31m$:("; fi)$\e[0m$ \[email protected]\h \w$ '
;;
triton*)
[[ -n $WRKDIR ]] && alias cwd="cd$WRKDIR" && cwd
;;
kosh*|brute*|force*)
PS1='\[email protected]\h:\w\$' export IGNOREEOF=0 ;& *.aalto.fi) kinit ;; *) echo 'Where are you?' ;; esac  ;; is important, if replaced with ;&, execution will continue with the command associated with the next pattern, without testing it. ;;& causes the shell to test next pattern. The default behaviour with ;; is to stop matches after first pattern has been found. # create a file 'cx' case "$0" in
*cx) chmod +x "[email protected]" ;&
*cw) chmod +w "[email protected]" ;;
*c-w) chmod -w "[email protected]" ;;
*) echo "$0: seems that file name is somewhat different"; exit 1 ;; esac # chmod +x cx # ln cx cw # ln cx c-w # to make a file executable 'cx filename'  The following example is useful for Triton users: array jobs, where one handles array subtasks based on its index. Exercise 2.3: Re-implement the above mentioned example ... [[ -d$d && ! $(echo$PATH|grep $d) ]] ... with the matching operator =~ Improve the tarit.sh script we developed recently: add check for the number of the given arguments. Hint: $# must be zero or one. validate the given path like path/to/file. Hint: [[ $d =~ regexpr ]], the path may have only alphanumeric symbols, dots, underscore and slashes as a directory delimiter. Expand cx script: check that$@ not empty add option for cr that would add read rights for all. Hint: chmod a+r ... (*) Write a function (add to bin/functions) that validates an IPv4 using =~ matching operator. The function should fail incorrect IPs like 0.1.2.3d or 233.204.3.257. The problem should be solved with the regular expression only. Use return command to exit with the right exit code.

## Loops¶

### Arithmetic¶

BASH works with integers only (no floating point) but supports wide range of arithmetic operators using arithmetic expansion $(( expression )). • All tokens in the expression undergo parameter and variable expansion, command substitution, and quote removal. The result is treated as the arithmetic expression to be evaluated. • Arithmetic expansion may be nested. • Variables inside double parentheses can be without a$ sign.
• BASH has other options to work with the integers, like let, expr, $[], and in older scripts/examples you may see them. Available operators: • n++, n--, ++n, --n increments/decrements • +, - plus minus • ** exponent • *, /, % multiplication, (truncating) division, remainder • &&, || logical AND, OR • expr?expr:expr conditional operator (ternary) • ==, !=, <, >, >=, <= comparison • =, +=, -=, *=, /=, %= assignment • () sub-expressions in parentheses are evaluated first • The full list includes bitwise operators, see man bash section ARITHMETIC EVALUATION. # without dollar sing value is not returned, though 'n' has been incremented n=10; ((n++)) # but if we need a value n=10; m=3; q=$((n**m))

# here we need exit code only
if ((q%2)); then echo odd; fi
if ((n>=m)); then ...; fi

# condition ? integer_value_if_true : integer_value_if_false
n=2; m=3; echo $((n<m?10:100)) # checking number of input parameters, if$# is zero, then exit
# (though the alternative [[ $# == 0 ]] is more often used, and intuitively more clear) if ! (($#)); then echo Usage: $0 argument; exit1; fi  # sum all numbers from 1..n, where n is a positive integer # Gauss method, summing pairs if (($#==1)); then
n=$1 else read -p 'Give me a positive integer ' n fi echo Sum from 1..$n is $((n*(n+1)/2))  Left for the exercise: make a summation directly 1+2+3+…+n and compare performance with the above one. For anything more mathematical than summing integers, one should use something else, one of the option is bc, often installed by default. # bc -- an arbitrary precision calculator language # compute Pi number echo "scale=10; 4*a(1)" | bc -l  ### For loops¶ BASH offers several options for iterating over the lists of elements. The options include • Basic construction for arg in item1 item2 item3 ... • C-style for loop for ((i=1; i <= LIMIT ; i++)) • while and until constructs Simple loop over a list of items: # note that if you put 'list' in quotes it will be considered as one item for dir in dir1 dir2 dir3/subdir1; do echo "Archiving$dir ..."
tar -caf ${dir//\/.}.tar.gz$dir && rm -rf $dir done  If path expansions used (*, ?, [], etc), loop automatically lists current directory: # example below uses ImageMagick's utlity to convert all *.jpg files # in the current directory to *.png. # i.e. '*.jpg' similar to 'ls *.jpg' for f in *.jpg; do convert "$f" "${f/.jpg/.png}" # quotes to avoid issues with the spaces in the name done # another command line example renames *.JPG and *.JPEG files to *.jpg # note: in reality one must check that a newly created *.jpg file does not exist for f in *.JPG *JPEG; do mv -i "$f" "${f/.*/.jpg}"; done # do ... done in certain contexts, can be omitted by framing the command block within curly brackets # and certain for loop can be written in one line as well for i in {1..10}; { echo i is$i; }

If in list omitted, for loop goes through script/function input parameters $@ # here is a loop to rename files which names are given as input parameters # touch file{1..3}; ./newname file1 file2 file3 for old; do read -p "old name$old, new name: " new
mv -i "$old" "$new"
done

Note: as side note, while working with the files/directories, you will find lots of examples where loops can be emulated by find ... -print0 | xargs -0 ... pipe.

Loop output can be piped or redirected:

# loop other all Triton users to find out who has logged in within last month
for u in $(getent group triton-users | cut -d: -f4 | tr ',' ' '); do echo$u: $(last -Rw -n 1$u | head -1)
done | sort > filename

The list can be anything what produces a list, like Brace expansion {1..10}, command substitution etc.:

# on Triton, do something to all pending jobs based on squeue output
for jobid in $(squeue -h -u$USER -t PD -o %A); do
scontrol update JobId=$jobid StartTime=now+5days done # using find to make a list of files to deal with; the benefit here is that you work # with the filename as a variable, which gives you flexibility as comparing to # 'find ... -exec {}' or 'find ... print0 | xargs -0 ...' for f in$(find . -type f -name '*.sh'); do
if ! bash -n $f &>/dev/null; then mv$f ${f/.sh/.fixme.sh} fi done  C-style, expressions evaluated according to the arithmetic evaluation rules: N=10 for ((i=1; i <= N ; i++)) # LIMIT with no$
do
echo -n "$i " done  Loops can be nested. ### While/until loops¶ Other useful loop statement are while and until. Both execute continuously as long as the condition returns exit status zero/non-zero correspondingly. while condition; do command1 command2 ... done # sum of all numbers 1..n; n expected as an argument n=$1 i=1
until ((i > n)); do
((s+=i)); ((i++))
done
echo Sum of 1..$n is$s

# endless loop, can be stopped with Ctrl-c or killed
# drop an email every 10 minutes about running jobs on Triton
# can be used in combination with 'screen', and run in background
while true; do
squeue -t R -u $USER | mail -s 'running jobs' [email protected] sleep 600 done # with the help of 'read var' passes file line by line, # IFS= variable before read command to prevent leading/trailing # whitespace from being trimmed input='/path/to/txt/file' while IFS= read -r line; do echo$line
done < "$input" # reading file fieldwise, IFS= is a delimiter, note quoting with \ file='/path/to/file.csv' while IFS=\; read -r f1 f2 f3 f4; do printf 'Field1: %s, Field2: %s, Field4: %s\n' "$f1" "$f2" "$f4"
done < "$file" # process substitution while IFS= read -r line; do # do something with the lines done < <(file -b *) # instead, one can mistakenly try 'file -b * | while read line; do ... done' # with pipe, 'while' body will be run in a subshell, and thus all variables # used inside the loop will die when loop is over  All the things mentioned above for for loop applicable to while / until loops. printf should be familiar to programmers, allows formatted output similar to C printf. [9] ### Loop control¶ Normally for loop iterates until it has processed all its input arguments. while and until loops iterate until the loop control returns a certain status. But if needed, one can terminate loop or jump to a next iteration. • break terminates the loop • continue jump to a new iteration • break n will terminate n levels of loops if they are nested, otherwise terminated only loop in which it is embedded. Same kind of behaviour for continue n. Even though in most of the cases you can design the code to use conditionals or alike, break and continue certainly add the flexibility. # here we expand an earlier example to avoid errors in case$f is missing/not accesible
for f in *.JPG *.JPEG; do
[[ -r "$f" ]] || { echo "$f is missing on inaccessible"; continue; }
mv -i "$f" "${f/.*/.jpg}"
done

Exercise 2.4: Expand tarit.sh so that it would accept none or multiple directories. Using for loop rename all the files with the .txt extension to .fixed.txt. Tip: create dummy .txt files with mkdir d{1..3}; touch d{1..3}/{1..3}.txt. Tip #2: combine ‘for’ loop with ‘find’: for f in $(find . -name '*.txt'); .... Use the while example with .cvs, take the demospace/Finnish_Univ_students_2018.csv to count total number of students around Finland. Tip: add checking that the number of students field is a number [[$totalnmb =~ ^[0-9]+$]] Using built-in arithmetic write a script daystill.sh that counts a number of days till a deadline (vacation/salary). Script takes date as an argument, date format suitable to date -d like days_till 2019-6-1. Tip: use date +%s and convert seconds to days (roughly). Make script that takes a list of files and checks if there are files in there with the spaces in the name, and if there are, rename them by replacing spaces with the underscores. Use BASH’s builtin functionality only. As a study case, compare it against find . -depth -name '* *' -execdir rename 's/ /_/g' {} \; Write separate scripts that count a sum of any 1+2+3+4+..+n sequence, both the Gauss version (see above) and summation with for ((...)). Where n is an argument, like gauss.sh 1000. Benchmark them with time for n=10000 or more. (*) Implement both methods within one script as functions and benchmark them whithin the file (*) For the direct summation one can avoid loops, how? Tip: discover eval$(echo {1..$n}) (*) Get familiar with the getent and cut utilities. Join them with a loop construction to write a mygetentgroup script or just a oneliner that generates a list of users and their real names that belong to a given group. Like: $ mygetentgroup group_name meikalaj1: Jussi Meikäläinen meikalam1: Maija Meikäläinen ...  (*) To Aalto users: on kosh/lyta run net ads search samaccountname=$USER accountExpires 2>/dev/null to get your account expiration date. It is a 18-digit timestamp, the number of 100-nanoseconds intervals since Jan 1, 1601 UTC. Implement a function that accept a user name, and if not given uses current user by default, and then converts it to the human readable time format. Tip: http://meinit.nl/convert-active-directory-lastlogon-time-to-unix-readable-time Expand it to handle “Got 0 replies” response, i.e. account name not found. ## Arrays, input, Here Documents¶ ### Arrays¶ BASH supports both indexed and associative one-dimensional arrays. Indexed array can be declared with declare -a array_name, or first assignment does it automatically (note: indexed arrays only): arr=(my very first array) arr=('Otakaari 1' Espoo 02150 [6]='PL 11000') arr[5]=AALTO  To access array elements (the curly braces are required, unlike normal variable expansion): # elements one by one echo${arr[0]} ${arr[1]} # array values at once${arr[@]}

# indexes at once
${!arr[@]} # number of elements in the array${#arr[@]}

# length of the element number 2
${#arr[2]} # to append elements to the end of the array arr+=(value) # assign a command output to array arr=($(command))

# emptying array
arr=()

# to destroy, delete an array
unset arr

# to unset a single array element
unset arr[6]

# sorting array
IFS=$'\n' sorted=($(sort <<<"${arr[*]}")) # array element inside arithmetic expanssion requires no${}
((arr[$i]++)) # split a string like 'one two three etc' or 'one,two,three,etc' to an array # note that IFS=', ' means that separator is either space or comma, not a sequence of them IFS=', ' read -r -a arr <<< "$string"

# spliting a word to an array letter by letter
word=qwerty; arr=($(echo$word | grep -o .))

Loops through the indexed array:

for i in ${!arr[@]}; do echo arr[$i] is ${arr[$i]}
done

Negative index counts back from the end of the array, [-1] referencing to the last element.

Quick ways to print array with no loop:

# with keys, as is
declare -p arr

# indexes -- values
echo ${!arr[@]} --${arr[@]}

# array elements values one per line
printf "%s\n" "${arr[@]}"  Passing an array to a function as an argument could be the use case when you want to make it local: f() { local arr=(${!1})    # pass $1 argument as a refence # do something to array elements echo${arr[@]}
}

# invoke the function, huom that no changes have been done to the original arr[@]
arr=(....)
f arr[@]

BASH associative arrays (this type of array supported in BASH since version 4.2) needs to be declared first (!) declare -A asarr.

Both indexed arrays and associative can be declared as an array of integers, if all elements values are integers declare -ia array or declare -iA. This way element values are treated as integers always.

asarr=([university]='Aalto University' [city]=Espoo ['street address']='Otakaari 1')
asarr[post_index]=02150

Addressing is similar to indexed arrays:

for i in "${!asarr[@]}"; do echo asarr[$i] is ${asarr[$i]}
done

Even though key can have spaces in it, quoting can be omitted.

# use case: your command returns list of lines like: 'string1 string2'
# adding them to an assoative array like: [string1]=string2
declare -A arr
for i in $(command); do arr+=(["${i/ */}"]="${i/* /}") done  Variable expanssions come out in the new light: # this will return two elements of the array starting from number 1${arr[@]:1:2}

# all elements without last one
${arr[@]:0:${#arr[@]}-1}

# parts replacement will be applied to all array elements
declare -A emails=([Vesa][email protected] [Kimmo][email protected] [Anna][email protected])
echo ${emails[@]/@*/@gmail.com} # returns: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]  For a sake of demo: let us count unique users and their occurances (yes, one can do it with ‘uniq -c’ :) # declare assoative array of integers declare -iA arr for i in$(w -h | cut -c1-8); do   # get list of currenly logged users into loop
for u in ${!arr[@]}; do # check that they are unique if [[$i == $u ]]; then ((arr[$i]++))
continue 2
fi
done
arr[$i]=1 # if new, add a new array element done for j in${!arr[@]}; do    # printing out
echo ${arr[$j]} $j done  Another working demo: script that automates backups or just makes a sync of data to a remote server. Same can be adapted to copy locally, to a usb drive or alike. # array of directories to be backuped, to skip one, just comment with # declare -A dirs dirs[wlocal]=/l/$USER
dirs[xpproject]=/m/phys/extra/project/xp
dirs[homebin]=$HOME/bin cmd='/usr/bin/rsync' # rsync args="-auvW --delete --progress [email protected]" # accept extra args, like '-n' for the dryrun first serv='[email protected]:backups' # copying to ~/backups that must exist # array key is used for the remote dir name for d in${!dirs[@]}; do
echo "Syncing ${dirs[$d]}..."
$cmd$args ${dirs[$d]}/ $serv/$d
done

Exercise 2.5: make a script/function that produces an array of random numbers, make sure that numbers are unique. Print the array nicely using printf for formating. one version should use BASH functionality only (Tip: $RANDOM) the other one can use shuf (*) Pick up the ipvalid function that we have developed earlier, implement IP matching regular expression as ^([0-9]{1,3})\.([0-9]{1,3})\.([0-9]{1,3})\.([0-9]{1,3})$ and work with the ${BASH_REMATCH[*]} array to make sure that all numbers are in the range 0-255 ### Working with the input¶ User input can be given to a script in three ways: • as command arguments, like ./script.sh arg1 arg2 ... • interactively from keyboard with read command • as standard input, like command | ./script Nothing stops from using a combination of them or all of the approaches in one script. Let us go through the last two first and then get back to command line arguments. read can do both: read from keyboard or from STDIN # the command prints the prompt, waits for the response, and then assigns it # to variable(s) read -p 'Your names: ' firstn lastn # read into array, each word as a new array element ('arr' declared automatically) read -a arr -p 'Your names: '  Given input must be checked (!) with a pattern, especially if script creates directories, removes files, sends emails based on the input. # request a new directory name till correct one is given (interrupt with Ctrl-C) regexp='^[a-zA-Z0-9/_-]+$'
until [[ "$newdir" =~$regexp ]]; do
read -p 'New directory: ' newdir
done

read selected options

• -a <ARRAY> read the data word-wise into the specified array <ARRAY> instead of normal variables
• -N <NCHARS> reads <NCHARS> characters of input, ignoring any delimiter, then quits
• -p <PROMPT> the prompt string <PROMPT> is output (without a trailing automatic newline) before the read is performed
• -r raw input - disables interpretion of backslash escapes and line-continuation in the read data
• -s secure input - don’t echo input if on a terminal (passwords!)
• -t <TIMEOUT> wait for data <TIMEOUT> seconds, then quit (exit code 1)

read is capable of reading STDIN, case like command | ./script, with while read var it goes through the input line by line:

# IFS= is empty and echo argument in quotes to make sure we keep the format
# otherwise all spaces and new lines shrinked to one and leading/trailing whitespace trimmed
while IFS= read -r line; do
echo "line is $line" # do something useful with$line
done

Though in general, whatever comes from STDIN can be proceeded as:

# to check that STDIN is not empty
if [[ -p /dev/stdin ]]; then
# passing STDIN to a pipeline  (/dev/stdin can be omitted)
cat /dev/stdin | cut -d' ' -f 2,3 | sort
fi

Other STDIN tricks that one can use in the scripts:

# to read STDIN to a variable, both commands do the same
var=$(</dev/stdin) var=$(cat)

In the simplest cases like ./script arg1 arg2 ..., you check $# and then assign$1, $2, … the way your script requires. # here we require exactly two arguments if (($#==2)); then
var1=$1 var2=$2
# ... do something useful
else
echo 'Wrong amount of arguments'
echo "Usage: ${0##*/} arg1 arg2" exit 1 fi  To work with all input arguments at once we have$@:

# $# is a number of arguments on the command line, must be non-zero if (($#)); then
for i; do
echo "$i" # ... do something useful with each element of [email protected] # note that 'for ...' uses [email protected] by default if no other list given with 'in ...' done else echo 'No command line arguments given' fi  As a use case, our tarit.sh script. The script can accept STDIN and arguments, so we check both: # Usage: tarit.sh [dirname1 [dirname2 [dirname3 ...]]] # or command | tarit.sh # by default no directories to archive. i.e. current args='' # checking for STDIN, if any, assigning STDIN to$args
[[ -p /dev/stdin ]] && args=$(</dev/stdin) # if arguments are given, appending the$args with [email protected]
(($#)) && args+=" [email protected]" # no arguments, no stdin, then it is a current dir [[ -z "$args" ]] && args="$(pwd)" # by now we should have a directory list in$args to archive
for d in $args; do # checking that directory exists, if so, archive it if [[ -d "$d" ]]; then
echo Archiving $d ... tar caf${d##*/}.$(date +%Y-%m-%d).tar.gz "$d"
else
echo "   $d does not exist, skipping." fi done  Often, the above mentioned ways are more than enough for simple scripts. But what if options and arguments are like ./script [-f filename] [-z] [-b] [arg1 [arg2 [...]]] or more complex? (common notaion: options in the square brackets are optional). What if you write a production ready script that will be used by many other as well? It is were getopt offers a more efficient way of handling script’s input options. In the simplest case getopt command (do not get confused with getopts built-in BASH function of similar kind) requires two parameters to work: first is a list of valid input options – sequence of letters and colons. If letter followed by a colon, the option requires an argument, if folowed by two colons, argument is optional. For example, the string getopt "sdf:" says that the options -s, -d and -f are valid and -f requires an argument, like -f filename. The second argument required by getopt is a list of input parameters (options + arguments) to check, i.e. just $@.

Let us use cx script as a demo:

# common usage function with the exit at the end
usage() {
echo "Usage: $sname [options] file [file [file...]]" echo ' -a, gives access to all, like a+x, by default +x' echo ' -d <directory/path/bin>, path to the bin directory' echo " can be used in 'cx' to copy a new script there" echo ' -v, verbose mode for chmod' echo ' -h, this help message' exit 1 } # whole trick is in this part: getopt validates the input parameters, # structures them by dividing options and arguments with --, # and returns them to a variable # then they are reassigned back to [email protected] with 'set --' opts=$(getopt "avhd:" "[email protected]") || usage
set -- $opts # defining variables' default values ALL='' CMD='/usr/bin/chmod' sname=${0##*/}  # the name this script was called by

# by now we have a well structured [email protected] which we can trust.
# to go through options one by one we start an endless 'while' loop
# with the nested 'case'. 'shift' makes another trick, every time
# it is invoked it is equal to 'unset $1', thus [email protected] arguments are # "shifted down",$2 becomes $1,$3 becomes $2, etc # 'getopt' adds -- to [email protected] which separates valid options and the rest # that did not qualify, when it comes to '--' we 'break' the loop while true; do case${1} in
-h) usage ;; # output help message and exit
-a) ALL=a ;; # if -a is given we set ALL
-v) CMD+=' -v' ;; # if verbose mode required
-d) shift # shift to take next item as a directory path for -d
BINDIR="$1" if [[ -z "$BINDIR" || ! -d "$BINDIR" ]]; then echo "ERROR: the directory does not exist" usage fi ;; --) shift; break ;; # remove -- esac shift done # script body case "$sname" in
cx*) $CMD${ALL}+rx "[email protected]" && \
[[ -n "$BINDIR" ]] && cp -p [email protected]$BINDIR ;;
cw*) $CMD${ALL}+w "[email protected]" ;;
cr*) $CMD${ALL}+r "[email protected]" ;;
c-w*) $CMD${ALL}-w "[email protected]" ;;
*) echo "ERROR: no idea what $sname is supposed to do"; exit 1 ;; esac  getopt can do way more, go for man getopt for details, as an example: # here is getopt sets name with '-n' used while reporting errors: our script name # accepts long options like '--filename myfile' along with '-f myfile' getopt -n$(basename $0) -o "hac::f:" --long "help,filename:,compress::" -- "[email protected]"  Exercise 2.6: Using the latest tarit.sh (see lecture notes) version as an example, expand above cx script to accept STDIN, like command | cx [options], where command produces a list of files. Example find . -t file -name '*.sh' | cx -a -d /path/to/bin. Using cx demo as an example, expand the latest version of our tarit.sh (see lecture notes) to make it accepting the following options and arguments: tarit.sh -h -y -d [dirname1 [dirname2 [dirname3 ...]]]. By default, with no args, it still should make an archive of the current directory. -h returns usage info, -d  is a directory the tar archives will go to, your script has to check that directory exists, the script must also check whether a newly created archive already exist and if so, skip creating the archive with the corresponding warning message. (*) -y should force overwriting already existing archive. (*) -s should make script silent, so that no errors or other messages would come from any inline command. ### Here Document, placeholders¶ A here document takes the lines following and sends them to standard input. It’s a way to send larger blocks to stdin. command <<SomeLimitString Here comes text with$var and even $() substitutions and more just text which finally ends on a new line with the: SomeLimitString  Often used for messaging, be it an email or dumping bunch of text to file.: # NAME, SURNAME, EMAIL, DAYS are set earlier mail -s 'Account expiration'$EMAIL<<END-OF-EMAIL
Dear $NAME$SURNAME,

your account is about to expire in $DAYS days.$(date)

Best Regards,
Aalto ITS
END-OF-EMAIL

Or just outputting to a file (same can be done with echo commands):

cat <<EOF >filename
... text
EOF

One trick that is particularly useful is using this to make a long comment:

: <<\COMMENTS
here come text that is seen nowhere
there is no need to comment every single line with #

Hint <<\LimtiString to turn off substitutions and place text as is with $marks etc In case you have a template file which contains variables as placeholders, replacing them: # 'template' file like: The name is$NAME, the email is $EMAIL # command to substitute the placeholders and redirect to 'output' file # the original 'template' file remains as is NAME=Jussi [email protected] cat template | while IFS= read -r line; do eval echo$line; done > output
# resulting file: The name is Jussi, the email is [email protected]

## Traps, debugging, profiling¶

### Catching kill signals: trap¶

What if your script generates temp file and you’d like to keep it clean even if script gets interrupted at the execution time?

The built-in trap command lets you tell the shell what to do if your script received signal to exit. It can catch all, but here listed most common by their numbers. Note that signals are one of the common ways of communicating with running processes in UNIX: you see these same numbers and names in programs like kill.

• 0 EXIT exit command
• 1 HUP when session disconnected
• 2 INT interrupt - often Ctrl-c
• 3 QUIT quit - often Ctrl-
• 9 KILL real kill command, it can’t be caught
• 15 TERM termination, by kill command
# 'trap' catches listed signals only, others it silently ignores
# Usage: trap group_of_commands/function list_of_signals

trap 'echo Do something on exit' EXIT

Expanding the backup script from the Arrays section, this can be added to the very beginning:

interrupted() {
echo 'Seems that backup has been interrupted in the middle'
echo 'Rerun the script later to let rsync to finish its job'
exit 1
}

trap interrupted 1 2 15
# ... the rest of the script

In other situation, instead of echo, one can come up with something else: removing temp files, put something to the log file or output a valuable error message to the screen.

Hint About signals see Standard signals section at man 7 signal. Like Ctrl-c is INT (aka SIGINT).

### Debugging and profiling¶

BASH has no a debugger, but there are several ways to help with the debugging

Check for syntax errors without actual running it bash -n script.sh

Or echos each command and its results with bash -xv script.sh, or even adding options directly to the script. -x enables tracing during the execution, -v makes bash to be verbose. Both can be set directly from the command line as above or with set -xv inside the script.

#!/bin/bash -xv

To enable debugging for some parts of the code only:

set +x
... some code
set -x

If you want to check quickly a few commands, with respect to how variables or other substitutions look like, use DEBUG variable set to echo.

#!/bin/bash

$DEBUG command1$arguments
command2

# call this script like 'DEBUG=echo ./script.sh' to see how *command1* looks like
# otherwise the script can be run as is.

One can also trap at the EXIT, this should be the very first lines in the script:

end() { echo Variable Listing: a = $a b =$b; }
trap end EXIT  # will execute end() function on exit

For a sake of profiling one can use PS4 and date (GNU version that deals with nanoseconds). PS4 is a built in BASH variable which is printed before each command bash displays during an execution trace. The first character of PS4 is replicated multiple times, as necessary, to indicate multiple levels of indirection. The default is +. Add the lines below right after ‘#!/bin/bash’

# this will give you execution time of each command and its line number
# \011 is a tab
PS4='+\011$(date "+%s.%N")\011${LINENO}\011'
set -x

Optionally, if you want tracing output to be in a separate file:

PS4='+\011$(date "+%s.%N")\011${LINENO}\011'
exec 5> ${0##*/}.$$.x && BASH_XTRACEFD='5' && set -x  Or to get your script looking more professional, one can enable DEBUG, i.e. tracing only happens when you run as DEBUG=profile ./script.sh: case DEBUG in profile|PROFILE|p|P) PS4='+\011(date "+%s.%N")\011{LINENO}\011' exec 5> {0##*/}.$$.x && BASH_XTRACEFD='5' && set -x ;; esac  For the larger scripts with loops and functions tracing output with the date stamps and line numbers can be summarized. For further discussion please take a look at [10] ## Parallel, crontab, perl/awk/sed¶ ### Running in parallel with BASH¶ The shell doesn’t do parallelzation in the HPC way (threads, MPI), but can run some simple commands at the same time without interaction. The simplest way of parallelization is sending processes to a background and waiting in the script till they are done.: # in the script body one may run several processes, like command1 & command2 & command3 &  Here is an example that can be run as time script to demonstrate that execution takes 5 seconds, that is the timing of the longest chunk, and all the processes are run in parallel and finished before script’s exit.: # trap is optional, just to be on the safe side # at the beginning of the script, to get child processes down on exit trap 'killall$(jobs -p) 2>/dev/null' EXIT

# dummy sleep commands groupped with echo and sent to the background
for i in 1 3 5; do
{ sleep $i; echo sleep for$i s is over; } &
done

# 'wait' makes sure jobs are done before script is finished
# try to comment it to see the difference
wait
echo THE END

Putting wait at very end of the script makes it to wait till all the child processes are over and only then exit. Having trap at very beginning makes sure we kill all the process whatever happens to the script. Otherwise they may stay running on their own even if the script has exited.

Another way to run in parallel yet avoiding sending to the background is using parallel. This utility runs the specified command, passing it a single one of the specified arguments. This is repeated for each argument. Jobs may be run in parallel. The default is to run one job per CPU. If no command is specified before the --, the commands after it are instead run in parallel.

# normally the command is passed the argument at the end of its command line. With -i
# option, any instances of "{}" in the command are replaced with the argument.
parallel command {} -- arguments_list

# example of making a backup with parallel rsync
parallel -i rsync -auvW {}/ user@server:{}.backup -- dir1 dir2 dir3

# in case you want to run a command, say ten times, the arguments can be any dummy list
# normally parallel passes arguments at the end of the command, with '-i' they needs to
# be placed explicitly with '{}', or can be skipped, like here
parallel -i date -- {1..10}

#  if no command is specified before the --, the commands after it are instead run in parallel,
parallel -- ls df "echo hi"

On Triton we have installed Tollef Fog Heen’s version of parallel from moreutils-parallel CentOS’ RPM. GNU project has its own though, with different syntax, but of exactly the same name, so do not get confused.

### Crontab¶

Allows run tasks automatically in the background. Users may set their own crontabs. Once crontab task is set, it will run independently on whether you are logged in to the system or not.

Run crontab -l to list all your current cron jobs, crontab -e to start editor. When in, you may add one or several lines, then save what you have added and exit the editor normally.

# run 'script' daily at 23:30
30 23 * * * $HOME/bin/backup_script > /home/user/log/backup.log 2>&1 # every two hours on Mon-Wed,Fri 0 /2 * * 1-3,5 rm /path/to/my/tmp/dir/* >/dev/null 2>&1  The executable script could be a normal command, but crontab’s shell has quite limited functionality, in case of anything more sofisticated than just a single command and a redirection you end up writing a separate script. The first five positions corresponds to: • minute (0-59) • hour (0-23) • day (1-31) • month (1-12) • day of week (0-7, 0 or 7 is Sunday) Possible values are: • * any value • , value list separator • - range of values • / steps You set your favorite editor: export EDITOR=vim (can be a part of ~/.bashrc). As part of the crontab file you may set several environmet variables, like MAILTO=name.surname@aalto.fi to recieve an output from the script or any possible errors. If MAILTO is defined but empty (MAILTO=""), no mail is sent. ### Perl, awk, sed¶ Powerful onliners. Please consult correspoding man pages and other docs for the details, here we provide some examples. As it was standed at very beginning of the course, shell, with all its functionality is only a glue in between all kind of utilities, like grep, find, etc. Perl, awk and sed are what makes terminal even more powerful. Even though Perl can do everything what can awk and sed, one still may find tons of examples with the later ones. Here we provide some of them. Python is yet another alternative. # set delimiter to : and prints the first field of each line of passwd file (user name) awk -F: '{print$1}' /etc/passwd

# sort lines by length, several ways to do it
cat file | perl -e 'print sort { length($a) <=> length($b) } <>'

## To continue: course development ideas/topics¶

• select command
• revise coreutils section, expand the examples and explanations, make it clear that BASH is about getting those small utilities to work together
• benchmark: C-code vs BASH, Python vs BASH, Perl vs BASH

### Ideas for exercises¶

• function to find all broken links
• (homework?) Implement a profiler, that summarizes PS4/date output mentioned above
• (homework?) Script that makes ‘pe1 pe2 … gpu32’ out of ‘pe[1-16],gpu11,gpu32’

In general, there could one script that one starts building from the first line up to a parallelization. Like backup script with rsync.

Git usage?

## Bonus material¶

Parts that did not fit.

[FIXME: should be moved to another tutorial SSH: beyond login]

### SSH keys and proxy (bonus section)¶

• SSH is the standard for connecting to remote computers: it is both powerful and secure.
• It is highly configurable, and doing some configuration will make your life much easier.

SSH keys and proxy jumping makes life way easier. For example, logging on to Triton from your Linux workstation or from kosh/lyta.

For PuTTY (Windows) SSH keys generation, please consult section “Using public keys for SSH authentication” at [7]

On Linux/Mac: generate a key on the client machine

ssh-keygen -o  # you will be prompted for a location to save the keys, and a passphrase for the keys. Make sure passphrase is strong (!)
ssh-copy-id aalto_login@triton.aalto.fi   # transfer file to a Triton, or/and any other host you want to login to

Note that same key can be used on multiple different computers.

SSH proxy is yet another trick to make life easier: allows to jump through a node (in OpenSSH version 7.2 and earlier -J option is not supported yet, here is an old recipe that works on Ubuntu 16.04). By using this, you can directly connect to a system (Triton) through a jump host (kosh): On the client side, add to ~/.ssh/config file (create it if does not exists and make it readable by you only):

Host triton triton.aalto.fi
Hostname triton.aalto.fi

ssh triton
`


text:
# Decoding File Permissions - Shell Scripting

Now that you know about users and groups, it’s time to decode the cryptic file permissions you’ve seen when using the ls command. This section describes how to decipher the permissions and where they come from.

Using file permission symbols

If you remember from previous sections, the ls command allows us to see the file permissions for files, directories, and devices on the Linux system:

$ls -l total 68 -rw-rw-r-- 1 rich rich 50 2007-09-13 07:49 file1.gz -rw-rw-r-- 1 rich rich 23 2007-09-13 07:50 file2 -rw-rw-r-- 1 rich rich 48 2007-09-13 07:56 file3 -rw-rw-r-- 1 rich rich 34 2007-09-13 08:59 file4 -rwxrwxr-x 1 rich rich 4882 2007-09-18 13:58 myprog -rw-rw-r-- 1 rich rich 237 2007-09-18 13:58 myprog.c drwxrwxr-x 2 rich rich 4096 2007-09-03 15:12 test1 drwxrwxr-x 2 rich rich 4096 2007-09-03 15:12 test2$

The first field in the output listing is a code that describes the permissions for the files and directories. The first character in the field defines the type of the object:

• - for files
• d for directories
• c for character devices
• b for block devices
• n for network devices

After that, there are three sets of three characters. Each set of three characters defines an access permission triplet:

• r for read permission for the object
• w for write permission for the object
• x for execute permission for the object

If a permission is denied, a dash appears in the location. The three sets relate the three levels of security for the object:

• The owner of the object
• The group that owns the object
• Everyone else on the system

This is broken down in Figure below.

The Linux file permissions

-rwxrwxr-x 1 rich rich 4882 2007-09-18 13:58 myprog
permissions for everyone else
permissions for group members
permissions for the file owner

the easiest way to discuss this is to take an example and decode the file permissions one by one:

-rwxrwxr-x 1 rich rich 4882 2007-09-18 13:58 myprog

The file myprog has the following sets of permissions:

• rwx for the file owner (set to the login name rich)
• rwx for the file group owner (set to the group name rich)
• r-x for everyone else on the system

These permissions indicate that the user login name rich can read, write, and execute the file (considered full permissions). Likewise, members in the group rich can also read, write, and execute the file. However, anyone else not in the rich group can only read and execute the file; the w is replaced with a dash, indicating that write permissions are not assigned to this security level.

Default file permissions

You may be wondering about where these file permissions come from. The answer, is umask. The umask command sets the default permissions for any file or directory you create:

$touch newfile$ ls -al newfile
-rw-r--r-- 1 rich rich 0 Sep 20 19:16 newfile
$The touch command created the file using the default permissions assigned to my user account. The umask command shows and sets the default permissions:$ umask
0022
$Unfortunately, the umask command setting isn’t overtly clear, and trying to understand exactly how it works makes things even muddier. The first digit represents a special security feature called the sticky bit. We’ll talk more about that later on in this chapter in the ‘‘Sharing Files’’ section. The next three digits represent the octal values of the umask for a file or directory. To understand how umask works, you first need to understand octal mode security settings. Octal mode security settings take the three rwx permission values and convert them into a 3-bit binary value, represented by a single octal value. In the binary representation, each position is a binary bit. Thus, if the read permission is the only permission set, the value becomes r--, relating to a binary value of 100, indicating the octal value of 4. Table below shows the possible combinations you’ll run into. Octal mode takes the octal permissions and lists three of them in order for the three security levels (user, group, and everyone). Thus, the octal mode value 664 represents read and write permissions for the user and group, but read-only permission for everyone else. Now that you know about octal mode permissions, the umask value becomes even more confusing.The octal mode shown for the default umask on my Linux system is 0022, but the file Icreated had an octal mode permission of 644. How did that happen? The umask value is just that, a mask. It masks out the permissions you don’t want to give to the security level. Now we have to dive into some octal arithmetic to figure out the rest of the story. The umask value is subtracted from the full permission set for an object. The full permission for a file is mode 666 (read/write permission for all), but for a directory it’s 777 (read/write/execute permission for all). Thus, in the example, the file starts out with permissions 666, and the umask of 022 is applied, leaving a file permission of 644. The umask value is normally set in the /etc/profile startup file. You can specify a different default umask setting using the umask command:$ umask 026
$touch newfile2$ ls -l newfile2
-rw-r----- 1 rich rich 0 Sep 20 19:46 newfile2
$By setting the umask value to 026, the default file permissions become 640, so the new file now is restricted to read-only for the group members, and everyone else on the system has no permissions to the file. The umask value also applies to making new directories:$ mkdir newdir
\$ ls -l
drwxr-x--x 2 rich rich 4096 Sep 20 20:11 newdir/

since the default permissions for a directory are 777, the resulting permissions from the umask are different from those of a new file. The 026 umask value is subtracted from 777, leaving the 751 directory permission setting.

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