Okay, so I made a thread earlier about how I am working on making a server which will allow two nodes to boot up and re-image themselves from an image residing on a second partition of their drives. I successfully got them to the point that they boot up and I can run a script I made, which is /usr/bin/restore.

When I boot up, I can enter the word, "restore," on the command line, and the script works without error. All it does is call another script with sudo, which contains the following:
The thing is, however, that I would like to eliminate the need for entering this command. I would prefer if the computers simply booted up, restored themselves, and then restarted. The problem I'm having, is that when I add the word, "restore" to the end of my ~/.bash_profile script, the computer boots up, but then prints a whole bunch of errors and reboots before I can see what happened. I'm currently building the image with "reboot" removed from the end, to see what exactly is going on.

I don't understand how a script that when typed, will function perfectly, however if it is run from "~/.bash_profile," it has errors. Other than the way the script is called, there is no difference.

I removed "reboot" from the end, and now it works. But why is it rebooting before it executes the first lines? And now I still need to use the "reboot" command, so it doesn't eliminate the need to type. Still working on it.

Puzzling. Keep us posted

Perhaps it's running too quickly?

The dd command could be starting before the mount is fully completed. Try adding a short sleep between commands and see if that helps. Something like:

You can also try redirecting the output, or at least the output of the critical commands, to a permanent log file, so you can see what the errors are.

Okay, I don't understand why, but when called from ~/.bash_profile or ~/.profile, mount fails with "unknown filesystem type 'ext2'" How does that make sense? By the time the shell is invoked, filesystem modules are already loaded, right? I'll try the sleep commands though. The only thing that's changed is the speed at which the script is called! I'll see what happens...

Alright, thanks David the H., you are right: It was being called too quickly. I used the exact until-loop you posted, and it works. It's still strange that it initially fails with ext2 being an unknown filesystem.