Hey everyone, I'm developing my first linux shell script and for some reason I can't get it to execute. The script is designed to create new users on the system.

I've placed the script in a /root/bin (a directory I created), and changed the permissions to 0750. When I try to execute the script from the root prompt, I get:

[root@coupweb bin] #./newuser tim
: bad interpreter : No such file or directory

What does this mean? I've included the script below if that helps.

Once again, thanks so much.

Matt
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/bash
# newuser script
# makes new user on coupweb.newcomb.virginia.edu
#
# create user and prompt for password
useradd $1
passwd $1
#
# add user apache (http server) to user's group
# sets group id for user's default group
tid=`id -g $1`
# defines default entry in /etc/group
fromStr=$1:x:$tid:
# defines modified entry in /etc/group with user apache added
toStr=$1:x:$tid:apache
# replaces fromStr with toStr in /etc/group
replace $fromStr $toStr -- /etc/group
#
# make public_html and cgi-bin directories with u=rwx,g=rx,o=rx
mkdir ~$1/public_html -m 0755
mkdir ~$1/public_html/cgi-bin -m 0755
#
# add user to ftp log
echo $1 >> /etc/vsftpd.chroot_list

The ./newuser tells the shell to execute the script with the name newuser in the current directory. Unless you're in /root/bin, this is not going to work. Simply use newuser or /root/bin/newuser if you want to be explicit about it.

That error message can be caused by a permission problem. I'd check the perms on the /root and /root/bin directories. Also, if you use several partitions the options on the partition in which /root/bin resides needs to be mounted with the exec option.

Hmm...using both 'newuser' and '/root/bin/newuser' didn't work--both gave me the bad interpreter error from before. Neither did cd'ing to the /root/bin directory and then using newuser and ./newuser.

Also, the permissions on /root are 0750 and the perms on /root/bin are 0750. This seems to be what I want--root can rwx the directories, the admins group can only read and execute in the directories, and other users cannot access the directories (I did this for security reasons). I am not using any partitions (except /swap and /), so I'm not sure how that plays a role.

Any other ideas? Thanks again!

Can you execute the script like this?

bash /root/bin/newuser testacct

If you can, then I would guess one of two things:
1. The #!/bin/bash line is not the very first line of the file
2. The location of bash is not /bin/bash, and you would need to update it in the script

If you can't execute it with the command above, then it would seem your system doesn't have bash installed.

After some googling, I figured out my problem....I had developed the script in Notepad on my Windows box at home and then ftp'd it to the linux box at work, and I had forgot that Windows leaves '\r' carriage returns that don't show up when I looked at the file on my linux box. I used replace to get rid of them, and now everything works fine.

Don't worry, as soon as I get some more familiarity with Linux, I'll be switching over at home too.

quick question, because i didnt know what
will you paste the url you got that information from?