Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,

I need to automate some repacking tasks of a boot image for Android
When in command line, I can use this command:

Code:

mkbootfs /path/to/root > /path/to/ramdisk-recovery.cpio;

However, if I try to run the command from a shell script under Ubuntu, it fails and outputs to stdout instead of the specified ramdisk-recovery.cpio file.

I tried to pipe it using :

Code:

mkbootfs /path/to/root | cpio > /path/to/ramdisk-recovery.cpio;
# or
mkbootfs /path/to/root | cpio -o > /path/to/ramdisk-recovery.cpio;

but it fails also when in a bash script

I tried to redirect stdout using &> in different combinations, but I am still filling my screen while the ramdisk-recovery.cpio is not written

Anone knows how to correctly redirect the output for such programs? I found no manual/help for the mkbootfs binary

Code:

cpio -O outputfilename

writes cpio output to a file, is that what you want? Seems like it.

Thanks,
Well, I can do it easily using find . | cpio ...

However, I was a bit confused to not be able to use mkbootfs in a shell script while it works in cmd line

By the way, after further looking, mkbootfs is just a cpio variant, so should not be piped to cpio anyway

So, let's see it as a general question: is there any workaround to such binaries that once in a shell script, write to stdout? And why does the piping fails in this case?

Well, you weren't doing the same thing in terminal, you were doing command > file

In the script, you change it to command | cpio > file

Is cpio really needed here when it wasn't needed in the terminal? cpio reads filenames, but if mkbootfs doesn't print filenames, piping it into cpio makes no sense.

If you read well my first post you'll see that I did:
1- run this from command line in terminal: works perfect

Code:

mkbootfs /path/to/root > /path/to/ramdisk-recovery.cpio

2- put same line in shell script: it fails writing to stdout instead of the file

After that, I tried many piping tricks without success, even to gzip or using &>

Code:

mkbootfs /path/to/root | gzip > /path/to/ramdisk-recovery.gz

I attach the binary so that you can test

use as follow:
argument 1 is any folder, argument 2 is the path to the output cpio file it creates from your folder

Code:

mkbootfs /path/to/any_folder > /path/to/your_folder.cpio

Actually, I fixed my issue by using cpio instead of mkbootfs in my shell script.

However. I am still curious as to why I cannot redirect output from that binary

Well, stdout is the file, by definition, so it can't be writing to stdout... Try running nohup mkbootfs ... and seeing if the output ends up in nohup.out.

Without knowing the code of mkbootfs it's hard to say for sure -- it's not a standard command, I can't test it myself here. But it's possible for a program to tell if it has a terminal or not and act different accordingly.

Thank you for the support

Well, the source is here:
https://github.com/CyanogenMod/andro...pio/mkbootfs.c

I "quickly" followed the source and I see no terminal check code
Also, the portion of code I noted where it writes:

Code:

fwrite(data, datasize, 1, stdout);

This is compatible with the cmd command syntax:

Code:

mkbootfs /path/to/root > /path/to/ramdisk-recovery.cpio

That is output redirected to a file with >

Now, I tried all redirection possibilities from this manual:
Advanced Bash Shell Scripting Guide - I/O Redirection
but none will work when this binary is run from a shell script instead of cmd line

As I said, I fixed my script using cpio instead, but just out of curiosity wanted to learn more about this issue