NASH(8) 						      System Manager's Manual							   NASH(8)

NAME

       nash - script interpretor to interpret linuxrc images

SYNOPSIS

       nash [--quiet] [--force] script

DESCRIPTION

       nash  is a very simple script interpretor designed to be as small as possible. It is primarily designed to run simple linuxrc scripts on an
       initrd image. Arguments to commands may be enclosed in either single or double quotes to allow spaces to be included in the arguments. Spa-
       ces outside of quotations always delineate arguments, and so backslash escaping is supported.

       Additionally,  if  nash	is  invoked as modprobe, it will immediately exit with a return code of zero. This is to allow initrd's to prevent
       some extraneous kernel error messages during startup.

       There are two types of commands, built in and external. External commands are run from the filesystem via execve(). If commands	names  are
       given without a path, nash will search it's builtin PATH, which is /usr/bin, /bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin.

       Currently, nash supports the following built in commands.

       access -[r][w][x][f] path
	      Tells whether the current user has sufficient permissions to read, write, or execture path, or if the file exists (see access(2) for
	      more information).

       echo [item]* [> filename]
	      Echos the text strings given to a file, with a space in between each item. The output may be optionally redirected to a file.

	      exec <command> The command given is execed, overlaying the nash process.

       find dir -name name
	      Display the path to files named name in or below directory dir.  This is a very limited implementation of find(1).

       findlodev
	      Prints the full path to the first unused loopback block device on the system. If none is available, no output is displayed.

       losetup /dev/loopdev file
	      Binds file to the loopback device /dev/loopdev. See losetup(8) for information on loopback devices.

       mkdevices path
	      Creates device files for all of the block devices listed in /proc/partitions in the directory specfied by path.

       mkdir [-p] path
	      Creates the directory path. If -p is specified, this command will not complain if the directory exists. Note this is a subset of the
	      standard mkdir -p behavior.

       mknod path [c|b] major minor
	      Creates  a  device inode for path. This is identical to mkdev(1) which the exceptions that it will not create named pipes and if the
	      directories in path do not exist they will be automatically created.

       mkrootdev path
	      Makes path a block inode for the device which should be mounted as root. To determine this device nash uses the device suggested	by
	      the  root= kernel command line argument (if root=LABEL is used devices are probed to find one with that label). If no root= argument
	      is available, /proc/sys/kernel/real-root-dev provides the device number.

       mount [--ro] -o opts -t type device mntpoint
	      Mounts a filesystem. It does not support NFS, and it must be used in the form given above (arguments must go first).  If	device	is
	      of  the  form  LABEL=foo the devices listed in /fB/proc/partitions will be searched, and the first device with a volume label of foo
	      will be mounted. Normal mount(2) options are supported, and --ro will mount the filesystem read only for	compatibility  with  older
	      versions of nash.  The defaults mount option is silently ignored.

       pivot_root newrootpath oldrootpath
	      Makes the filesystem mounted at newrootpath the new root filesystem, and mounts the current root filesystem as oldrootpath.

       raidautorun mddevice
	      Runs raid autodetection on all raid-typed partitions. mddevice must be a raid device (any will do).

       showlabels
	      Display a table of devices, their filesystem labels, and their uuids.

       umount path
	      Unmounts the filesystem mounted at path.

RETURN VALUE

       Returns 0 is the last command succeeded or 1 if it failed.

OPTIONS

       --force
	      Allows force really execute the script, even though nash doesn't appear to be running from an initrd image.

BUGS

       Probably  many.	nash is not a shell, and it shouldn't be thought of as one. It isn't entirely different from a shell, but that's mostly by
       accident.

AUTHOR

       Erik Troan <ewt@redhat.com>

4th Berkeley Distribution					  Sat Mar 27 1999							   NASH(8)