UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

What is a good way to find an entry in a .conf file and then remove all lines associated with that entry?

I have a Samba server running on Linux that I would like to easily add/remove share entries in the smb.conf file without removing or deleting lines that are not associated with that section.

So a typical file would look like this.

[xxxuser]
comment = xxxuser Testing
path = /samba/xxxuser
Read Only = NO

[drew]
path = /tmp

[testgroup]
path = /samba/testgroup
read only = No


So if I wanted to remove [drew] share I guess I would just need to remove all lines including [drew] between the ending ] and the beginning [ ?

Any script ideas?

Thanks,

You didn't say how much you need a script. Will it be run automatically? Otherwise, SWAT can delete a whole share at once.

We use SWAT for small changes, but when we have several users or groups that we need to be able to delete multiple entries all at once whether it be 5 or 500. I figured that if I could find a way to remove single entries between the brackets I would be able to resolve the other issues.

sed '
:loop
$!{
/^[[]somename/{
/^[[].*[[]/!{N;}
/\\$/t loop
s/^.*\n//
}' /path/somefile


i.e.
1) find the line beginning with "[username"
2) grab each line below this until you have the next "[..." (i.e. "[username.*\n[.*" )
3) delete the characters up to (and including) the last newline (i.e. the last "/n")

Now, How can I run this within an existing script?

Just add these two commands into the script ... modifying it to your specs, and debugging my mistakes - it looks right to me, but I haven't time to test it for you

-----

cp /path/somefile /path/somefile.tmp

sed -n '
:loop
$!{
/^[[]somename/{
/^[[].*[[]/!{N;}
/\\$/t loop
s/^.*\n//
}
p' /path/somefile.tmp > /path/somefile