Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello every one, i want to convert my shell script into a binary executable a .exe file , is it possible to do that if so are there any tools . Would the script take off when the arguments are parsed.

Thanks
Venu

There is a shell compiler maintained and available here:

Francisco Rosales, home page

Well, this is something I have often pondered. A way to write code that is far more difficult to decipher - unless you have the source.

We have a number of intelligent users (if that's not an oxymoron) who like to read scripts and work out what they do and how. Of course, there are various sensitive things that we want to keep secret from them, yet give them the scripted ability to do. Nothing too complex, but it often involves privileged access to a database, for which we store the passwords in a file. Of course, if you can read the script, you know where to find the file!

I grabbed at this link delighted that someone could solve all my woes, but I fail to get it to build. I have a few versions of AIX and two HPUX servers. From the README, it seems to suggest I just run a make, but that fails and I don't know even what it is trying to do. I've pretty much written everything as SQL or KSH (unless you count REXX on VM), so I've no experience in this. I did gcc compile the shc.c and get an executeable which I could then use to process test.ksh to create test.ksh.x, but this wouldn't run. Just the message "Killed" came back.

Am I being a complete fool?

Any pointers?

"Hat's Off" to Jim for finding this if it works.

ksh93 comes with a compiler called shcomp

Code:

$ cat test
#!/bin/ksh
for (( i=1; i<=5; i++)); do
  echo Hello World
done
$ ( echo '#!/bin/ksh' ; shcomp test ) > test.bin && chmod +x test.bin
$ ./test.bin
Hello World
Hello World
Hello World
Hello World
Hello World

Which will not make it totally unreadable, but to a certain extent.

Code:

$ od -c < test.bin
0000000   #   !   /   b   i   n   /   k   s   h  \n  \v 023  \b  \0 003
0000020  \0 003  \f 002 005       i   =   1 001  \0 005  \f 002 004   i
0000040   +   + 001  \0  \f 002 006       i   <   =   5 001  \0 203  \0
0000060   @  \0 003 005   e   c   h   o 006   H   e   l   l   o 006   W
0000100   o   r   l   d  \0 003
0000106

shcomp doesn't really compile the script, but saves the parser tree that's generated internally. The script itself is still traceable using -x as if it were plain text.

shc, as suggested, will encrypt the script using RC4, but you'll lose the cross-platform advantage. Also, somehow it seems to dislike newer versions of Linux, or at least VirtualBox, as the compiled scripts always died.

So, are there any suggestion how to get shc running? As a non-C person, I don't understand the compile process to get the tool installed, so I don't know what I'm looking for to fix it.



Robin
Liverpool/Blackburn
UK

Are you on AIX 64 bit, as it looks like someone had a similar problem here and found a fix.

You could also try the -T option to shc, this also got it working of AIX 5.3 64bit for me, also fixed `PTRACE_ATTACH' undeclared error when generating on cygwin:

Code:

$ ./shc -T -f test.ksh
 
$ ./test.ksh.x test params 1 2 3
+ alias whence=type -a
+ alias ll=ls -l
+ alias la=ls -A
+ alias l=ls -CF
+ echo $@ is test params 1 2 3
$@ is test params 1 2 3
+ echo command line: ./test.ksh.x test params 1 2 3
command line: ./test.ksh.x test params 1 2 3
+ echo hello world
hello world
+ echo [581760] PAUSED... Hit return!
[581760] PAUSED... Hit return!
+ read DUMMY
done
+ exit 0

'
BTW I think you probably need to set CC=gcc before trying the make (If not I might be able to help if you supply the error make is giving):

Code:

$ CC=gcc ; export CC
$ make