LinuxQuestions.org - How do you debug a bash script

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How do you debug a bash script

Hello,

Ok I've been typing in a bash script from a book and I successfully found some typos and got rid of them. Also, I got help earlier from here about for loops. So I've made progress but I'm stuck again.

I suppose my question is how do you debug a bash script. I have Fedora Core 3 running on a legacy machine, so no GUI just command line only. At the moment all I know is how to use VI. What other tools are good? For example, is there a tool that I can use to print out lines 53-56 from a script.
I remember tail from a course but that only did the lines at the end of a script.

I have checked the listing against the book and I'm getting

Code:

:command not found

:command not found

:command not found

:command not found

:command not found

:command not found

:command not found

:command not found

-bash: chok3: line 380: syntax error: unexpected end of file

It seems to be something to do with variable declarations having a comment # at the end.

How can I make these go away?

More importantly the later lines that instruct iptables are not being executed because iptables -L gives the default.

I think that I have a problem similar to a missing close quote but I can see none.

Do any of this make sense to you guys?

Regards,
Meadensi

With vi you can type: 53G to go to line 53

If you either:

Code:

set -x

Code:

bash -x scriptname

bash will echo each command in the script before execution, either globally, or for a certain process.

Thanks,

Code:

bash -x scriptname

This give loads of info and now I am making progress again.

Cheers,
Meadensi

Ok, so new problem

People,

Ok so now I have a new problem. When I run the code (using the bash -x option ) ...

Code:

# Enable broadcast echo Protection

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts

I get the response

Code:

+echo 1

:No such file or directoryet/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts

Now we can see that the error message "No such file or directory" is being merged with the pathname "/proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts". I highlighted them in color.

The pathname is definitely valid. I do not know why this is happening? This is my first script, albeit out of a book so some configurations options may yet need changing.

Any ideas?
Meadensi