Question

I’m having an issue with my script. The variables X and Y are assigned the last octet of an IP address and work fine. Z is supposed to take X and Y and put the values into a new txt file.

X=$(ssh -i key.txt "$USER"@A.B.C.D "awk -F' ' '{print \$2}' /etc/openvpn/ccd/lastip.txt | awk -F'.' '{print \$4+4}'")
Y=$(ssh -i key.txt "$USER"@A.B.C.D "awk -F' ' '{print \$3}' /etc/openvpn/ccd/lastip.txt | awk -F'.' '{print \$4+4}'")
Z=$(ssh -i key.txt "$USER"@A.B.C.D "touch $NAME.txt | chmod 700 $NAME.txt mv $NAME.txt /etc/openvpn/ccd | echo -n "$X $Y" > /etc/openvpn/ccd/$NAME.txt")

I keep getting messages say permission denied:

mv: bash: /etc/openvpn/ccd/almost.txt: Permission denied
cannot move `almost.txt' to `/etc/openvpn/ccd/almost.txt': Permission denied

The directory exists and the permission for it are fine. How would I go about being able to move $NAME.txt into my desired directory?

EDIT: Even without Z=$() and using the command line, I still get permission denied errors

Answer 1

This bit needs some work:

touch $NAME.txt | chmod 700 $NAME.txt mv $NAME.txt /etc/openvpn/ccd | echo -n "$X $Y" > /etc/openvpn/ccd/$NAME.txt

At minimum, you need to replace the pipes with semicolons, and one of the spaces too:

touch $NAME.txt; chmod 700 $NAME.txt; mv $NAME.txt /etc/openvpn/ccd; echo -n "$X $Y" > /etc/openvpn/ccd/$NAME.txt

It does not look plausible that you want to execute $NAME.txt; you should not use 700 but 600 permissions.

Since you didn’t have a semicolon before the mv, the chmod program tried to change permissions on files mv, $NAME.txt a second time, and /etc/openvpn/ccd.

Unless you are running as root, you should not be able to write in /etc/openvpn/ccd. However, you have not shown us the permissions on the current directory, though since touch appears to have worked, you can presumably write in that. Nor, at the time I wrote this, were the permissions on /etc/openvpn/ccd given — but see below.

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And, as John Kugleman notes in a comment, in the larger context where the command string I dissected is inside a set of double quotes, the double quotes around "$X $Y" should be escaped with backslashes:

Z=$(ssh -i key.txt "$USER"@A.B.C.D "touch $NAME.txt; chmod 700 $NAME.txt; mv $NAME.txt /etc/openvpn/ccd; echo -n \"$X $Y\" > /etc/openvpn/ccd/$NAME.txt")

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Source of ‘no permission’ error

Given that the permissions on /etc/openvpn/ccd are:

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2013-01-16 15:01 /etc/openvpn/ccd

we can infer that you are not running as root and are not permitted to write in the directory. You may need to get permission to use sudo on the target machine.