Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,

With root user i set this in the .bashrc of user1 on machine 1

Code:

more .bashrc
./track.sh
# .bashrc

# Source global definitions
if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then
        . /etc/bashrc
fi

Content of track.sh are

Code:

more track.sh
read -p "Enter ID:" reason
while [[ $reason == '' ]] # While string is different or empty...
do
    echo "Enter a valid string" # Ask the user to enter a valid string
    read -p "Enter ID: " reason # Ask the user to enter a string
done

When user1 tries to login to machine1 from machine 2 by typing

Code:

ssh user1@machine1

He enters username and password and then instead of getting the prompt he sees infinite loop like below

I m on Linux OS

Can you tell me why infinite loop instead of a prompt for ID ???

"no query process" is the error KSH makes when you try to read from a nonexistent co-process. -p means something way different in ksh than bash.

Don't use read -p if you don't know for a fact that the shell is bash, just do

Code:

printf "%s:  "  "prompt string" # Print a prompt without newline
read VARIABLE

You could also put #!/bin/bash as the first line to force it to run using bash.

Your suggestion would resolve the issue, but becoz of this issue i m running into an infinite loop; doesn't even let me login to the box so; how can i remove the -p option?

Me, being the only root user ...Any solution to this ?

Do you mean that you can't log in to change it because you hit the problem too? There might be a way around it if:-Are any of these an option?

Failing that, you might need to boot in a special way with an in-memory OS and then access and update the disks from within there, but it can be fiddly. If we do go that way, I have a few questions:-
We will do our best to help you.


Robin

yes, two things actually: first, use scp to overwrite/move track.sh so that it doesn't bother you any more. Then log on normally and continue.

Second and foremost: it is a long standing knowledge that anything that:

- creates output
- does any processing
- is interactive

does NOT BELONG INTO A PROFILE at all. This is true especially for a root user, which is always the ultima ratio to resort to if anything else goes wrong. Do NOT USE this user account for something you need to do daily, because - as you have just seen - whatever you do it could go wrong and then lock you out of the system.

I hope this helps.

bakunin