Basic Bash Scripting
Bash has a built in scripting language, which I guess is pretty cool. These days, you should just use Python for most things instead of writing Bash scripts, but you would be horrified if you knew how much of the internet, nay, how much of the world runs on bash scripts. Most servers? Of course. Water plants? Absolutely. Nuclear reactors? I'd be shocked if there wasn't a cron-jobbed bash script running somewhere in every plant in the world. Don't tell anyone, but a great deal of this site runs on janky cron jobs.
Because bash and cron jobs (which we'll learn about later) are basically the underpinning of the modern world, you should probably get to know them.
Bash Scripts
Open up your favorite text editor and build a file that looks like this and save it as "hello.sh". Note the top line which tells the shell what type of script it is, the file extension doesn't matter at all.
#!/bin/bash echo "Hello World"
Then you can execute it using the command $ bash hello.sh. Similarly,
you can use chmod to mark the file executable and then execute it using
$ ./hello.sh.
As you might have noticed, the command you are running is exactly what you would run in a normal terminal command. Does that mean most of the knowledge you've learned remains applicable in here?
In a shocking turn of events, yes, it does. Don't get used to things working this nicely in the future.
More Advanced Scripting
Check out what we can do to take input and execute commands in a script. Just build the script, save it whatever you want, make it executable and run it. Don't worry about understanding it, I'm trying to demonstrate capability, not teach you how to do things at this point.
#!/bin/bash
echo "Enter Your Name"
read name
# read is a nice little bash builtin function that isn't available in
the shell,
# but is in the scripting language. Also, lines starting with '#' are
known as comments and aren't executed, these are in all languages,
you'll get used to them.
date="$(date)"
# We just set the value that date returns to date
# using something called "command substitution".
# Unsurprisingly, you can do very complicated things with that.
echo "Welcome $name it is $date"
And finally, here is a program that counts to 10, printing out all the numbers as it goes. Save it as counter.sh in your Documents directory and run it with ./counter.sh.
#!/bin/bash
valid=true
count=1
while [ $valid ]
do
echo $count
if [ $count -eq 10 ];
then
break
fi
((count++))
done
Don't worry about what is going on in there, just know we can do whatever we want using bash scripting, though we probably should use something more modern like Python. Still, good to have in a pinch.
Cron Jobs
Sometimes you might find yourself needing to run a command every couple of minutes, and luckily, there is a wonderful Linux tool for that named crontab. These commands can be anything, from kicking off shell scripts, starting python processes, checking that programs are still running, really anything you want to schedule, cron jobs are the right way to do it.
A crontab file contains instructions for the cron daemon in the following simplified manner: "run this command at this time on this date". Each user can define their own crontab file. Commands defined in any given crontab are executed under the user who owns that particular crontab.
To see what is in your crontab file, run crontab -l. To edit it, run
crontab -e.
Add this to the bottom of your cronjobs to execute the counter.sh script every minute.
*/1 * * * * /home/studentName/Documents/counter.sh
Alright, that incantation on the front that says when to run can be a monstrosity, especially when it comes to more complicated timing, so don't learn it and just use existing examples on line. I use this site (https://crontab.guru/examples.html) for all my crontab-ing needs. (You better believe that Roppers run on crontabs and janky Python scripts).
If you want to spend more time learning about Bash, check out https://tryhackme.com/room/bashscripting , but promise to come back to Roppers.
Assignment:
- Write the bash script to append the date and time the script was run to a file named "dates.txt"
- Write the cron command to run the script you just wrote every Friday at noon.