BASH: Sudo Cat Multiline Commands to Shell Script

Question

I want to append several lines of shell commands to a file owned by root. I have sudo access. In short I want to put this:

export M2_HOME=/opt/apache-maven-3.1.1 
export M2=$M2_HOME/bin 
PATH=$M2:$PATH

I tried this:

m2config=$(cat << EOL
export M2_HOME=/opt/apache-maven-3.1.1
export M2=\$M2_HOME/bin
PATH=\$M2:\$PATH
EOL
)

and then

sudo bash -c "echo $m2config >> /etc/profile.d/maven.sh"

But to no avail. Does anyone know how to do this? I have consulted many similar questions but none addressing this exact need.

pobrelkey · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-29 21:44:02Z

29

sudo bash -c "cat >> /etc/profile.d/maven.sh" << EOL
export M2_HOME=/opt/apache-maven-3.1.1
export M2=\$M2_HOME/bin
PATH=\$M2:\$PATH
EOL

If you don't fancy spawning a subshell, sudo tee -a /etc/profile.d/maven.sh > /dev/null << EOL works just as well.

answered Nov 29, 2013 at 21:44

pobrelkey

6,00123 silver badges29 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

note that the shell usually tries to expand variables ($M2). You can prevent this by specifying 'EOL' instead of EOL in the first line.