Create a directory in all sub directories

incudie · 01-05-2009, 01:28 PM

Hopefully someone knows how to do this because I am not having any luck in finding or figuring out an answer.

I want to create 3 directories in all the sub directories of a folder. Example:

$usera/
$userb/
$userc/

I want to create the directories:
home/
documents/
music/

into each of there folders but in bulk, say I had 200 users and I did not want to have to type the command in for each user.

Thank you!

--Incudie

matthewg42 · 01-05-2009, 01:41 PM

You user directories have a '$' at the start of the directory name, or these are variable which hold the names of the users?

Also, it is typical to have a directory called /home which contains a sub-directory for each user on the system. If the user already exists, /home/<username> should already exist. You want to create a sub-directory inside this called "home" (e.g. /home/bob/home)? That seems perverse.

You should make sure that you set the owner of the directories you create so that they are owned by the users which you are creating them for. Unless you do this, the users will likely not be able to use the directories you make.

Here's an example with what I think makes a more sane description of the problem:

Problem: I have three users on my system, "bob", "connie" and "stang". Their home directories are in the usual place (i.e. /home/bob /home/connie and /home/stang).

In each of their home directories, I want to make a sub-directory called "documents", and another called "music". How can I do this so they can use these directories?

Answer. Log in as root and do this (# is the root prompt here):

Code:

# for user in bob connie stang; do 
  mkdir /home/$user/{music,documents}
  chown $user /home/$user/{music,documents}
done

Note that when you create user accounts, you can use the useradd tool with the -m option to copy a "skeleton" user directory for them. See the useradd manual page for more details (search for "skel").

pixellany · 01-05-2009, 01:47 PM

Let's assume that /home contains only directories for each user (the normal situation)

Code:

for user in $(ls /home); do mkdir /home/$user/home; mkdir /home/$user/documents; mkdir /home/$user/music; done

pixellany · 01-05-2009, 01:49 PM

I was BSing with a colleague while matthew was typing---his solution is more complete and elegant than mine......

incudie · 01-05-2009, 01:51 PM

Hi matthewg42,

Thanks for the reply, the user thing was a bad example on my part, (I thought it would have been easier to understand).

The reality is I have a bunch of folders (one for each of our customers)

customers/customerA
customers/customerB

In each customer folder there are sub directories labeled "Documentation 2002/captures" "Documentation 2003/captures" etc etc.
In the past everyone creates a new folder for each year for each customer.

What I'm trying to figure it out is how to create the following structure in each customer folder

Documentation 2009
--> Captures
--> Projects
--> Archive
--> Diagrams

I did not know I could run commands like that (what you posted above). Is that just bash?

Thanks,

incudie · 01-05-2009, 01:59 PM

Ooo Thank you very much you guys!

I got the general idea and was able make the correct command for my needs.

Thanks again!

incudie · 01-05-2009, 02:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pixellany

Let's assume that /home contains only directories for each user (the normal situation)

Code:

for user in $(ls /home); do mkdir /home/$user/home; mkdir /home/$user/documents; mkdir /home/$user/music; done

Hey pixellany,

Based on your example, what should be done if the username is spaced such as:

"John Doe"

I have tried quotes on "$user" to no avail.

Thanks

pixellany · 01-05-2009, 02:29 PM

Try this:
for user in $(ls /home); do echo $user; done

What we are looking for is how "John Doe" gets rendered in the list. If you get--eg--:
mike
sam
John
Doe
then the quoting is not going to work.

The best thing in Linux (Unix, and all progeny) is dont have spaces in file/directory names.

pixellany · 01-05-2009, 02:36 PM

Here's a hint:

Code:

[mherring@mystical play]$ touch "the file"
[mherring@mystical play]$ ls
garb  the file  words
[mherring@mystical play]$ for fil in $(ls); do echo $fil;done
garb
the
file
words
[mherring@mystical play]$ for fil in $(ls|sed 's/ /_/'); do echo $fil;done
garb
the_file
words

You can use a loop like this to rename anything that has a space in it, but if you are dealing with directories having the same name as users, that's not going to be a good thing.

In your code, you can simply use SED again to change (from my example) "the_file" back to "the file".

incudie · 01-05-2009, 03:09 PM

Awesome thanks for the explanation.

I am playing around with adding the inverted sed statement.

Is it possible to do something like:

$for fil in $(ls|sed 's/ /_/'); do mkdir $fil|sed 's/_/ /')/{Captures,Archive}; done

Hope is to change it from "the file" to "the_file" then back to "the file"

pixellany · 01-05-2009, 06:00 PM

Have you tried it?

The one thing that jumps out at me is that a pipe (|) requires that the two statements are designed to produce / receive data. For example: "mkdir $fil" does not produce an output that can be piped to anything.

How about:
mkdir $(echo $fil|sed 's/_/ /')

When building something like this, always test the pieces as you go.

incudie · 01-05-2009, 06:50 PM

Hey Pixellany,

Thank you again, I understand what you mean and was able to do that as well.

I found a reference on google and did something similar and was able to accomplish what I needed.

Here is the script:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
SAVEIFS=$IFS
IFS=$(ls /media/smb/Customer)
for f in *
do
mkdir /media/smb/Customer/"$f"/"Documentation 2006"
mkdir /media/smb/Customer/"$f"/"Documentation 2006"/Captures
mkdir /media/smb/Customer/"$f"/"Documentation 2006"/Projects
mkdir /media/smb/Customer/"$f"/"Documentation 2006"/Archive
mkdir /media/smb/Customer/"$f"/"Documentation 2006"/Diagrams
mkdir /media/smb/Customer/"$f"/"Documentation 2007"
mkdir /media/smb/Customer/"$f"/"Documentation 2007"/Captures
mkdir /media/smb/Customer/"$f"/"Documentation 2007"/Projects
mkdir /media/smb/Customer/"$f"/"Documentation 2007"/Archive
mkdir /media/smb/Customer/"$f"/"Documentation 2007"/Diagrams
mkdir /media/smb/Customer/"$f"/"Documentation 2008"
mkdir /media/smb/Customer/"$f"/"Documentation 2008"/Captures
mkdir /media/smb/Customer/"$f"/"Documentation 2008"/Projects
mkdir /media/smb/Customer/"$f"/"Documentation 2008"/Archive
mkdir /media/smb/Customer/"$f"/"Documentation 2008"/Diagrams
done
IFS=$SAFEIFS

Thank you again!