Shell Programming and Scripting

Did you have the write permission to the directory you are trying to write?

Yes, for sure.

ls -1 != ls -l
You are not accurately trying the suggestions that you are being given.

Put two lines before your for loop
echo src = $src
echo dest = $dest

And change your sed statement to something like:
echo "s#${src}#${dest}#g"
so we can see what command is being generated. Post both the code you use and the output it generates.

Yes, that was a typo....i did use ls -1, not ls -l (it's become natural to type it coz i use it so often!) and got the errors mentioned earlier.

Anyway, i tried it again. Here is my code...

for i in `ls -1 $ORACLE_BASE/admin/${dest}/pfile/`
do
echo src=${src}
echo dest=${dest}
echo "replacing ${src} to ${dest} for $i"
#cp "$i" "$ORACLE_BASE/admin/${dest}/pfile/$i_backup"
echo "s#${src}#${dest}#g"
sed -e "s#${src}#${dest}#g" "$i"
#rm -f "$i_backup"
done
echo "finished"

And here is the output....

src=db1
dest=db2
replacing db1 to db2 for init.ora.162006131752
s#db1#db2#g
Can't open init.ora.162006131752
finished

I can only see one possibility why your script fails. You are looking for your file in the wrong place.

Code:

for i in `ls -1 $ORACLE_BASE/admin/${dest}/pfile/`
do

# i = init.ora.162006131752 
# the qualified path is 
# $ORACLE_BASE/admin/${dest}/pfile/init.ora.162006131752

echo src=${src}
echo dest=${dest}
echo "replacing ${src} to ${dest} for $i"

#cp "$ORACLE_BASE/admin/${dest}/pfile/$i" "$ORACLE_BASE/admin/${dest}/pfile/$i_backup"
echo "s#${src}#${dest}#g" 
sed -e "s#${src}#${dest}#g" "$ORACLE_BASE/admin/${dest}/pfile/$i"
#rm -f "$i_backup"
done
echo "finished"

I have done exactly what u showed below, and when the script is running i see that that does work. Only thing is that it doesnt get saved, so when i open the file after the script has finished, it's with the ${src} words.

I tried this, but it didnt work...

sed -e "s#${src}#${dest}#g" "$ORACLE_BASE/admin/${dest}/pfile/$i" > $ORACLE_BASE/admin/${dest}/pfile/$i

I also tried this...

sed -e "s#${src}#${dest}#g" "$ORACLE_BASE/admin/${dest}/pfile/$i" >> $ORACLE_BASE/admin/${dest}/pfile/$i

...but it just added the 2 files together (the one with ${src} words and the one after sed does it's job). I only want the part with the ${dest} words saved in this directory. how can i do this without using cp, coz that always seems to be giving errors.

They will never work. You are reading and writing data back to it at the same time.

Code:

sed -e "s#${src}#${dest}#g" "$ORACLE_BASE/admin/${dest}/pfile/$i" >> "$ORACLE_BASE/admin/${dest}/pfile/$i_backup"

mv "$ORACLE_BASE/admin/${dest}/pfile/$i_backup" "$ORACLE_BASE/admin/${dest}/pfile/$i"