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So, this is strange. When I manually run commands it all works fine, but when I run a script with identical commands, I get strange error output.

This is what I run:

lxc list;
for elem in {001..005}; do lxc stop ubuntu-"$elem"; done;
for elem in {001..005}; do lxc start ubuntu-"$elem"; done;
lxc list;

When I do that manually, all works with no error and my command have an actual effect. LXD machines are actually getting stopped and started again.

However, if I just write this as a script:

#!/bin/bash
lxc list;
for elem in {001..005}; do lxc stop ubuntu-"$elem"; done;
for elem in {001..005}; do lxc start ubuntu-"$elem"; done;
lxc list;

I get errors (very uninformative ones, I guess about not finding machines to run command against).

error: not found
error: not found

For both loop commands.

I'm new here so please advise.

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    This looks like you've got some difference in environmental variables or their values between your login shell, and the /bin/bash that runs the script. Can you run printenv in a script and see if that matches printenv output from the interactive (login) shell? Commented Jul 22, 2015 at 17:56
  • How exactly are you executing the script? Commented Jul 22, 2015 at 17:57
  • @BruceEdiger I will try and I presume a diff of both outputs should help? steeldriver sh script.sh Commented Jul 22, 2015 at 18:20
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    @BruceEdiger I did output both script and login shell printenv and vimdiffed those - differences are vast. What can or what should I do about that? Commented Jul 22, 2015 at 18:27
  • Can you run the script with sh -x script and paste the output? Commented Jul 22, 2015 at 18:28

1 Answer 1

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{001..005} is a bash feature but you are running your script with sh and on Ubuntu sh is dash not bash.

So don't run your script with sh script.sh but with bash script.sh or even simply ./script.sh since you have #!/bin/bash at the beginning of your script.

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  • You were correct. Running with bash was fine. Obviously sh on Ubuntu 15.04 links to dash which does not support a 'for loop'; not the same way bash does. However, running ./ did not work: asked for permission, but with sudo it also just outputs "command not found". Why is that so? Commented Jul 22, 2015 at 21:32
  • You need to give execution permission to your script, typically with chmod +x script.sh to run it with ./script.sh. I am not sure what happens with sudo in this case. Commented Jul 22, 2015 at 21:45

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