All shell scripts dropping back to command line

Question

I'm probably doing something remarkably stupid, but I can't figure out what.

Running Ubuntu Server 12.04 on a cloud host (Digital Ocean, if it matters). All shell scripts do absolutely nothing and just return immediately to the prompt, without error, warning or even a wag of the middle finger.

• start-stop-daemons scripts will not run from command line with "./script-name", not just cron

• execute bit is set

• shell is /bin/bash

• user is root

• tried changing #!/bin/sh to #!/bin/bash

• tried not using dash by dpkg-reconfigure dash

• scripts are being parsed -- if I edit it to something illegal, I get errors

Running out of ideas...

Is there some reason I just wouldn't be seeing the output?

Answer 1

Try to debug the shell script, here is how

Put that after the #!/bin/bash line

logfile=/tmp/script.log
exec > $logfile 2>&1

then execute the script with this command from shell prompt.

# bash -x script-name.sh 

See what happens next, check to see if the commands written in script are getting executed.

Also double check the path using this commnad.

echo $PATH