FRuMMaGe | # 1 | 2011-01-04, 02:35 | Report

I've come across a ridiculously infuriating problem.

I'm trying to load a simple bash script that cd's to a directory and executes a function, but whenever I sh the script, it ALWAYS tells me "can't cd /whatever/directory" (obviously this is not the actual directory)

For debugging purposes, I have set the directory name to things that DEFINITELY exist, such as /home/user/MyDocs/

I have run the command by itself in xterm with no problems, but it gets picky when I run it from a script.

I have chmod +x it and everything is as it should be. What the hell is wrong?

kureyon | # 2 | 2011-01-04, 10:20 | Report

Show some example code that illustrates your problem?

paai | # 3 | 2011-01-04, 11:13 | Report

wildly speculating... cd is not a program but part of the shell, isn't it? Does it make a difference if you execute your script using 'sh scriptname' or by chmodding it tox x and then execute it directly?

paai

littlebadger | # 4 | 2011-01-04, 11:23 | Report

another speculation...
is the script in fat partition? is so, try putting it in ext2 partition ( /home/user/scripts or whatever you want...)

FRuMMaGe | # 5 | 2011-01-04, 13:41 | Report

The script is basically just:

cd /home/user/MyDocs/
sh config.sh

Tried chmodding it and running it directly but it just says "permission denied". Its now in my opt diretory

The commands run fine when copied to the terminal, that's why this is so irritating

fgevaerts | # 6 | 2011-01-04, 15:14 | Report

Are line endings in the script correct? If you created the script on windows, chances are lines end on CR-LF instead of LF only, and the shell will include that CR character at the end of the command it parses. I'm pretty sure the directory you want to cd to doesn't have a CR character in its name.

FRuMMaGe | # 7 | 2011-01-04, 15:45 | Report

Nope. made it on leafpad with my n900

paai | # 8 | 2011-01-04, 15:46 | Report

I think your script works just fine :-) Considerthe following variant:

cd /home/user/MyDocs/
pwd

where pwd of course displays the current working directory.

You will see that the script prints '/home/user/MyDocs/', so it executes 'cd' all right.. The unexpected part is that after execution, control returns to the original situation.

Paai

fgevaerts | # 9 | 2011-01-04, 16:02 | Report

It wouldn't say "can't cd to /whatever/directory" then.

FRuMMaGe: Can you run "od -c yourscript.sh", and check that there are indeed only \n characters for line ending, and no \r?

The "can't cd to /whatever/directory" error is printed if you do have this wrong, which is why I wouldn't rule out this possibility without seriously checking.

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Last edited by fgevaerts; 2011-01-04 at 16:11.

FRuMMaGe | # 10 | 2011-01-04, 17:01 | Report

I ran your command and it does indeed end in an /r then an /n

How do I correct this?