Wget a script and run it

Question

I want to download a script from: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11210438/flockonus-stack.sh and execute it. My guess is, to use wget renaming it, chmod it, and execute.

What are the commands for doing that on Ubuntu?

Answer 1

Careful

Before running the script, do you trust the person who wrote it?

For example, did you expect the script to contain this?

echo "brain1" > /etc/hostname

That will try to change your hostname.

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For future reference, if, after verifying the script is correct and not malicious, you can run it in one line like this:

wget -O - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11210438/flockonus-stack.sh | bash

But download it separately and read it before running it the first time.

Answer 2

#!/bin/sh
if [ ! -f "/tmp/flockonus-stack.sh" ]
then
    wget -O /tmp/flockonus-stack.sh http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11210438/flockonus-stack.sh
fi

sh /tmp/flockonus-stack.sh

Answer 3

Try simply downloading it as you have specified with wget and then executing it directly. You can get fancy and use variables for the script you want to download etc, but this will do the trick

For example:

!#/bin/bash

#Change to temp directory
cd /tmp

#Download file using wget
wget http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11210438/flockonus-stack.sh

#Execute the file

sh flockonus-stack.sh

Answer 4

That script is from me, it is safe.. Loved the one-liner, but, it has some interactive lines that didn't run.. dunno why?

When dpkg runs, called by apt-get, it flushes stdin. If you are using a command like curl blah | bash, then you are basically sending contents of the page to bash via STDIN. If one of your commands is apt-get, then runs, everything else will be flushed.

The trick is to use a command like this apt-get install --yes denyhosts </dev/null. This gives apt-get a different input, and it simply flushes /dev/null instead of the rest of your script.

If you want to see a complete example of installing something via a remote script you may want to look at this script for setting up denyhosts

For the record, I prefer curl over wget for this, but wget should also be fine.