Bash – nvm command not available in bash script

bashnode.jsshell-scriptsoftware installation

I am trying to build a script in in which nvm and eventually node will get installed.
I have installed nvm with cURL. I see the modifications in the .profile or .bashrc file (both work) and when typing the nvm at the bash prompt, it shows the options available etc.
So nvm works. Manually I can install node, but as soon as I put the nvm command in a shell script:

nano test.sh

#!/bin/bash
nvm

and run it with:

chmod 755 test.sh
./test.sh

I get:

./test.sh: line 2: nvm: command not found

If it can't find nvm, I don't even have to think of

nvm ls-remote

nvm install ...

I got Ubuntu 14.04 installed and Bash is my shell.

Best Answer

nvm command is a shell function declared in ~/.nvm/nvm.sh.

You may source either of following scripts at the start of yours to make nvm() available:

. ~/.nvm/nvm.sh
. ~/.profile
. ~/.bashrc
. $(brew --prefix nvm)/nvm.sh  # if installed via Brew

Related Solutions

Bash – sudo not executing bashrc as expected

sudo can be configured to set $HOME to match the new user when switching users, or not to. In your case, it appears it is set to not switch $HOME. That can be useful when you want to switch to user accounts that are dedicated to specific service applications, but still want to keep using your personal shell configuration and other settings.

And ~/.bashrc is actually just a shorthand for $HOME/.bashrc.

So when you do sudo -u newuser bash, sudo switches the username to newuser but $HOME is still set to /home/myuser.

When bash attempts to execute ~/.bashrc, it has a slight problem: as newuser, it might have no access to read /home/myuser/.bashrc unless you have specifically granted that access. If you haven't, that is probably why .bashrc is getting skipped. Because $HOME is still set to /home/myuser, there will be no attempt to execute /home/newuser/.bashrc.

If you want sudo to set HOME=/home/newuser, you can:

use the -H option with the sudo command: sudo -Hu newuser bash
or add Defaults>newuser always_set_home to your sudoers file to automatically set the home directory when switching to newuser only
or add Defaults:myuser always_set_home to sudoers file to automatically set the home directory to match the new identity when myuser is running any sudo commands
or add Defaults always_set_home to sudoers file to force this behavior for all sudo commands on the system. (Some Linux distributions have this enabled by default.)

If you don't especially want to switch the home directory when switching users, then you'll need to make sure the new user can read your personal shell startup files instead.

The minimal permissions you'd need to allow for sudo -u newuser bash to run /home/myuser/.bashrc are:

a search permission to /home/myuser
a read permission to /home/myuser/.bashrc

If there is no convenient user group that would be common to both myuser and newuser, and ACLs are not available (i.e. traditional Unix-style permissions only), this would be the traditional way to do it:

chmod 711 /home/myuser          # i.e. directory permissions drwx--x--x
chmod 644 /home/myuser/.bashrc  # i.e. file permissions      -rw-r--r--

If ACLs are available for the filesystem containing your home directory, you could do this instead to grant the minimal necessary access:

setfacl -m u:newuser:x /home/myuser
setfacl -m u:newuser:r /home/myuser/.bashrc

If the permissions of the home directory were initially drwx------, after this command the permissions to /home/myuser would look like drwx--x---+. To check the complete ACL, use getfacl:

$ getfacl /home/myuser
getfacl: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names
# file: home/myuser
# owner: myuser
# group: myuser
user::rwx
user:newuser:--x
group::---
mask::--x
other::---

Best Answer

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Bash – sudo not executing bashrc as expected

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