Shell Programming and Scripting

Thanks for the assistance from both of you.

As I understand it, the "do while var1 var2 ..."
just assigns variables, while reading through a file, correct? And you can then substitute those variables later.

I saw another example [following your advice of researching more myself] where I see that I can specifically assign the variables.

So, it can be like "u=user1 w=stop1.script v=start1.script"

it was something with grouping, and you could assign all your variables in one line. Something like that. Obviously, I suspect that you understand this a lot better than I do.

Thanks. You've opened my eyes. I hope to begin testing today. Hopefully the admin isn't insecure about his job to not show me how he schedules the cron tasks! ... If I have issues with that, though, I'll try to read more FIRST, so my question will be a bit more knowledgeable, and show more effort on my part, instead of asking for a spoon fed, step-by-step answer.

Try to spend some time here on unix.com and after few months get back to your first post/thread and think over

Good morning. I have tried further, but am still unsuccessful.

The echo works, but it does not execute as expected.

From what I have read on the hp.com forums, this problem could be related to the .profile of the users that I am calling to execute the commands.

http://forums13.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?admit=109447627+1242136488365+28353475&threadId=38292

According to what I have read, this could be due to the fact that the user .profile is set up to load a certain user environment, but, I'm not understanding what they mean by changing this environment.

But, I did get the ttytype error that they are talking about "not a typewriter" or something to that effect during my experiments this morning.

I have attempted
su - usera -c commanda
su - userb -c commandb
su - userc -c commandc
what I get is that it appears to logon to each user's login environment (profile, as it were) but it only appears to actually run the command one time, at the very end.
At command prompt, I type it in this way (but of course, I would not be here, unless I wanted to script this.)
I tried a do loop, but it failed.

I tried concatenating scripts with an &, and they run, but I need the su portion, in order to have the permissions on the created file work, as the apparent usera, userb, userc need some perms on the files created as a result of running the script.
Example:
commanda& commandb & commandc
This works, but there is a file(s) created, and it is under "root" and I need the files created under usera, userb, userc, respectively. I saw something about chmod 4700 in the hp.com forums, but that made no sense to me, as I know of only three digits for chmod, so the fourth digit confuses me! What is the purpose of the 4700?

Once I had attempted this, the unix admin had to go back and delete the files wherever they were creted. (He was familiar with this problem, as he had dealt with it before.)

I also tried this:
creating three separate files
filea:
su - usera
commanda
exit
fileb:
su - userb
comamndb
exit
filec:
su - userc
commandc
exit

And concatenating them together on the command line:

filea & fileb & filec
and that didn't work, it appeared to log on to each user profile, and then only executed the commands for userc.

So, I'm back where I started, SOL.

have you tried to put in a script for root containing:

Code:

su - <user1> -c "<your_users_script>"
su - <user2> -c <your_users_script>
su - <user3> -c <your_users_script>

Since it would be batch you would have to test in .profile for interactive shell..
su user just changes UID, you execute "as" user
su - user reads .profile and so loads user's environment (and this includes terminal keyb stuff cron doesnt like...)
you would use between doublequotes after -c if you are to enter more than a command (typically a script that accepts start or stop for argument)

OK here is what I modified in /etc/profile
look for the following line:
# Be sure that VUE does not invoke tty commands
and add after the first if so it looks like:

Code:

 Be sure that VUE does not invoke tty commands

 if [ ! "$VUE" ]; then
   if [[ $- = *i* ]]; then  #tty interactive test (VBE - 030306)
   # set term if it's not set
.
.

then look for the matching if and place before my if so it looks like:

Code:

   fi                                      #tty interactive test
 fi                                        # if !VUE

# Leave defaults in user environment

This wil avoid all the cron error messages such as " Not TTY .."

Thanks for all of your help. Our unix admin is leaving. I guess I'll deal with this in due time, I'm going to seek training first, though.

I see nothing of the sort that you post in the .profile

This is what I see in the profile, as far as "terminal" setup. There is nothing else that I can find, with regards to "VUE" in the setup.

Code:

        # 
################################################################################
# @(#) $Revision: 72.2 $      
# Default user .profile file (/usr/bin/sh initialization).
# Set up the terminal:
 if [ "$TERM" = "" ]
 then
  eval ` tset -s -Q -m ':?hp' `
 else
  eval ` tset -s -Q `
 fi
 echo "Value of TERM has been set to \"$TERM\". "
 export TERM 
 stty erase "^H" kill "^U" intr "^C" eof "^D"
 stty hupcl ixon ixoff
 tabs
# Set up the search paths

I could post more, but it doesn't look necessary at this time. (If you say so, I will.)

thanks!