Command NOT found when called from inside bash script - linux

Question

I have an application named puppet installed on my Linux box. It is installed at location /usr/test/bin/puppet
This is how .bash_profile looks
export PATH=/usr/test/bin
if I run command puppet apply from console, it works fine but when I call puppet command from inside bash script, it says command not found
#!/bin/bash
puppet apply x.pp
Any ideas on what is wrong ?

Answer 1

.bash_profile is loaded only if bash is invoked as login shell (bash -l or from a real tty), at least in Debian based distributions bash in a virtual tty (for example when using xterm, gnome-terminal, etc...) is invoked as interactive shell.
Interactive shells loads the configuration from ~/.bashrc.
bash manpage:
~/.bash_profile
The personal initialization file, executed for login shells
~/.bashrc
The individual per-interactive-shell startup file
Shellscripts don't load any of these.
You can check which files are opened by any program with strace:
strace ./s.sh 2>&1 | grep -e stat -e open
Possible solutions:
You can export the variable at the beginning of every script:
#!/bin/bash
export PATH=$PATH:...
Or you can have another file with the desired variables and source it from any script that need those:
/etc/special_vars.sh:
export PATH=$PATH:...
script:
#!/bin/bash
. /etc/special_vars.sh
puppet ...
Configure the PATH in in ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile and ~/.profile for the user running the script (sub-processes will inherit the environment variables) to have some warranty that the user can run the script from different environments and shells (some bourne compatible shells others than bash do load ~/.profile)

Answer 2

Maybe the export of PATH is wrong?
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/test/bin/puppet

Answer 3

You could try using an alias, like so
in your .bash_profile:
alias puppet='bash puppet.fileextension'
you can also do
alias puppet='bash path/to/puppet.fileextension'
which will let you run the script from anywhere in Terminal.
EDIT:
OP has stated in the comments that there will be two different systems running, and he asked how to check the file path to the bash file.
If you do
#!/bin/bash
runPuppet(){
if [ -e path/to/system1/puppet.fileextension]
then
bash path/to/system1/puppet.fileextension $1 $2
elif [ -e path/to/system2/puppet.fileextension]
then
bash path/to/system2/puppet.fileextension $1 $2
fi
}
runPuppet apply x.pp
and change the runPuppet input to whatever you'd like.
To clarify/explain:
-e is to check if the file exists
$1 & $2 are the first two input parameters, respectively.