I need to use a shell script to move all files in a directory into another directory. I manually did this without a problem and now scripting it is giving me an error on the mv command.
Inside the directory I want to move files out of are 2 directories, php and php.tmp. The error I get is cd: /path/to/working/directory/php: No such file or directory. I'm confused because it is there to begin with and listed when I ls the working directory.
The error I get is here:
ls $PWD #ensure the files are there
mv $PWD/* /company/home/directory
ls /company/home/directory #ensure the files are moved
When I use ls $PWD I see the directories I want to move but the error afterward says it doesn't exist. Then when I ssh to the machine this is running on I see the files were moved correctly.
If it matters the directory I am moving files from is owned by a different user but the shell is executing as root.
I don't understand why I would get this error so, any help would be great.
Add a / after the path to specify you want to move the file, not rename the directory.
You should try this:
mv $PWD/\* /home/user/directory/
Are your variables properly quoted? You could try :
ls "$PWD" #ensure the files are there
mv "$PWD"/* "/company/home/directory"
ls "/company/home/directory" #ensure the files are moved
If any of your file or directory names contains characters such as spaces or tabs, your "mv" command may not be seeing the argument list you think it is seeing.
Related
I'm new to linux and shell script in general. I'm using a distribution of Debian on the WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). I'm trying to write a very simple bash script that will do the following:
create a file in a directory (child-directory-a)
move to the directory it is in
move the file to another directory (child-directory-b)
move to that directory
move the file to the parent directory
This is what I have so far (trying to keep things extremely simple for now)
touch child-directory-a/test.txt
cd child-directory-a
mv child-directory-a/test.txt home/username/child-directory-b
The first two lines work, but I keep getting a 'no such directory exists' error with the last one. The directory exists and that is the correct path (checked with pwd). I have also tried using different paths (i.e. child-directory-b, username/child-directory-b etc.) but to no avail. I can't understand why it's not working.
I've looked around forums/documentation and it seems that these commands should work as they do in the command line, but I can't seem to do the same in the script.
If anyone could explain what I'm missing/not understanding that would be brilliant.
Thank you.
You could create the script like this:
#!/bin/bash
# Store both child directories on variables that can be loaded
# as environment variables.
CHILD_A=${CHILD_A:=/home/username/child-directory-a}
CHILD_B=${CHILD_B:=/home/username/child-directory-b}
# Create both child folders. If they already exist nothing will
# be done, and no error will be emitted.
mkdir -p $CHILD_A
mkdir -p $CHILD_B
# Create a file inside CHILD_A
touch $CHILD_A/test.txt
# Change directory into CHILD_A
cd $CHILD_A
# Move the file to CHILD_B
mv $CHILD_A/test.txt $CHILD_B/test.txt
# Move to CHILD_B
cd $CHILD_B
# Move the file to the parent folder
mv $CHILD_B/test.txt ../test.txt
Take into account the following:
We make sure that all the folders exists and are created.
Use variables to avoid typos, with the ability to load dynamic values from environment variables.
Use absolute paths to simplify the movement between folders.
Use relative paths to move files relatives to where we are.
Another command that might be of use is pwd. It will tell you the directory you are on.
with your second line, you change the current directory to child-directory-a
so, in your third line there is an error because there is no subdirectory child-directory-a into subdirectory child-directory-a
Your third line should be instead :
mv test.txt ../child-directory-b
The point #4 of your script should be:
cd ../child-directory-b
(before that command the current directory is home/username/child-directory-a and after this command it becomes home/username/child-directory-b)
Then the point #5 and final point of your script should be:
mv test.txt ..
NB: you can display the current directory at any line of your script by using the command pwd (print working directory) in your script, it that helps
#!/bin/sh
# Variables
WORKING_DIR="/home/username/example scripts"
FILE_NAME="test file.txt"
DIR_A="${WORKING_DIR}/child-directory-a"
DIR_B="${WORKING_DIR}/child-directory-b"
# create a file in a directory (child-directory-a)
touch "${DIR_A}/${FILE_NAME}"
# move to the directory it is in
cd "${DIR_A}"
# move the file to another directory (child-directory-b)
mv "${FILE_NAME}" "${DIR_B}/"
# move to that directory
cd "${DIR_B}"
# move the file to the parent directory
mv "${FILE_NAME}" ../
I'm trying to rename the script audience_segment_map.sh to audience_segment_map_dedupe.sh using the Linux command line.
I have tried using the mv and the rename commands but they're not having the desired effect:
mv user/local/dmp_job/audience_segment_map.sh user/local/dmp_job/audience_segment_map_deupe.sh
This returns the error
'audience_segment_map.sh' No such file or directory"
but when I use the ls command, the file clearly shows up.
How should I proceed?
Pointing to a path with and without leading / slashes are different (absolute versus relative, respectively). Unless you are in the root directory, most likely you want your command to look like
mv /user/local/dmp_job/audience_segment_map.sh /user/local/dmp_job/audience_segment_map_deupe.sh
where the path is pointing to /user/local/... instead of user/local/...
Getting an error like this while moving one file from one directory to another directory inside it:
mv: cannot stat '/Home/Documents/liza_susan/org_chart.html': No such
file or directory
My linux command is:
mv /Home/Documents/liza_susan/org_chart.html Home/Documents/liza_susan/task
But the error is showing no such file or directory
see this image.. I want to move this org_chart.html file from liza_susan directory to task directory in liza_susan directory
This error means that /Home/Documents/liza_susan/org_chart.html does not exist. Are you sure the path is correct?
A couple of guesses:
/home/*USERNAME_HERE*/Documents/liza_susan/org_chart.html, or
/home/liza_susan/Documents/org_chart.html
~/liza_susan/Documents/org_chart.html
Update
Do this:
cd ~
pwd
Use this for your mv command (making sure you take care about case-sensitivity`)
Update 2
You can do this to avoid the /home trouble
cd ~
mv Documents/liza_susan/org_chart.html Documents/liza_susan/task
or even
cd ~/Documents/liza_susan
mv org_chart.html task
Im trying to run mv command using shell script but it gives me
mv: cannot stat `/opt/logs/merchantportal/logger.log.20160501.*': No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat `/opt/logs/merchantapi/logger.log.20160501.*': No such file or directory
// THIS IS MY SHELL SCRIPT
#!/bin/bash
now="$(date +'%Y%m%d')"
merchantPortalLogsPath="/opt/logs/merchantportal"
merchantApiLogsPath="/opt/logs/merchantapi"
currentDate="$(date +%Y%m%d)"
olderDate="$(date "+%Y%m%d" -d "1 days ago")"
merchantPortalLogsPathBackup=$merchantPortalLogsPath"."$olderDate
merchantApiLogsPathBackup=$merchantApiLogsPath"."$olderDate
mkdir $merchantPortalLogsPathBackup
mkdir $merchantApiLogsPathBackup
echo $merchantPortalLogsPath"/logger.log."$olderDate".*" $merchantPortalLogsPathBackup"/"
echo $merchantApiLogsPath"/logger.log."$olderDate".*" $merchantApiLogsPathBackup"/"
mv $merchantPortalLogsPath"/logger.log."$olderDate".*" $merchantPortalLogsPathBackup"/"
mv $merchantApiLogsPath"/logger.log."$olderDate".*" $merchantApiLogsPathBackup"/"
// BUT DIRECTORY IS CREATED SUCCESSFULLY
".*"
Putting the * inside double quotes will prevent the shell from treating that as a wildcard and will instead take it as a literal * character. Instead, change your script so that it does not double quote the *. For example:
mv ${merchantPortalLogsPath}/logger.log.${olderDate}.* ${merchantPortalLogsPathBackup}/
mv ${merchantApiLogsPath}/logger.log.${olderDate}.* ${merchantApiLogsPathBackup}/
Note: Technically should actually double quote the variable expansions to handle paths with spaces and other special characters in them. But I have not shown that to focus just on the problem at hand.
The log directories exist, but the log files within those directories did not. Since mv cannot move from data a log file that doesn't first exist, it complains, rather vaguely:
No such file or directory
Note: IMHO vague error messages are documentation/interface bugs -- if the error had said only:
No such file
And not left the user wondering if there was a missing directory it would have seemed less puzzling, since that message would clearly imply that the directory where the file was supposed to exist did in fact exist.
But consider this egregious GNU mv example, where a directory /tmp/a/ does not exist:
mv /tmp/a/b/c/d /tmp/foo
Output to STDERR:
mv: cannot stat '/tmp/a/b/c/d': No such file or directory
Now, the directory /tmp/a/ doesn't exist, and also the directories /tmp/b/ and /tmp/a/b/c/, and the file /tmp/a/b/c/d, none of them exist. The user is given no indication of which of those is the problem, and it's even possible (unusual, but possible) that /tmp/ doesn't exist. Where as writing just a few lines of code could output an error message that said something so much more useful, like:
mv: cannot stat '/tmp/a/b/c/d': `/tmp/` exists, but not directory `/tmp/a/`
...which collectively would probably save years of user-time.
I am working on a shell script and for some reason when I say
cp full_path/* full_path_directory/
I get an error. I have echoed out the command and when I run what it echos in an interactive shell it works. I can't figure out why it won't work in a shell script. I'm using full paths rather than absolute. I have tried to putting a slash at the end of the destination directory and then not putting a slash...what else could it be?
Error:
cp: /opt/local/apache2/htdocs/baseline/*: No such file or directory
So when I echo it out I get:
/opt/local/apache2/htdocs/baseline/* /opt/local/apache2/htdocs/test/
It means what it says. There are no files in /opt/local/apache2/htdocs/baseline/ directory, or you don't have permissions to read the directory. What does ls show you?