Question

I have the following simple shell script:

#   get all servers from config
sshservers=`node $scriptDir/readconfig.js --command cluster.sshservers`

#for each server
for server in sshservers
do

    #run deployserver with server (server:port format) argument
    if ! sh deployserver --server $server
    then
        exit 1 #failure
    fi

done

Now, the node command to get the sshservers may return an exit code that is nonzero. When this happens, things went horribly wrong and so I would like to quit with an error message.

How would I do this? Would this be the most appropriate way?

sshservers=`node $scriptDir/readconfig.js --command cluster.sshservers`
if ! $?
then
    echo "Error: node readconfig tool failed."
    exit 1
fi

Also, how do I output the stderr of this node command when things go so horribly wrong?

Finally, is the way I exit when sh deployserver fails proper, or should this be done differently?

Answer 1

To see if the last command was sucessfull you can do this :

if [ "$?" != "0" ]
    then
        //do something
    fi

The stderr should find it’s way to the console you are running the script by itself.