Shell Wildcards – How to Use with Sudo Command

command linesudowildcards

I am trying to take out all the contents of folder1 and drop it into the images_temp folder that folder1 is in:

jeatonhomes@jeatonhomes.com [~/images_temp]# sudo mv folder1/* .
mv: cannot stat `folder1/*': No such file or directory

Yet I am getting that error above, I tried to look up the answer here but there are answers that I do not believe apply to my situation. Please help.

jeatonhomes@jeatonhomes.com [~]# pwd && ls -l
/home/jeatonhomes
total 108
drwx--x--x  18 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes 4096 Apr  3 13:25 ./
drwx--x--x 106 root        root        4096 Mar 30 16:19 ../
lrwxrwxrwx   1 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes   37 Dec 18  2015 access-logs -> /usr/local/apache/domlogs/jeatonhomes/
-rw-------   1 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes  628 Apr  3 13:25 .bash_history
-rw-r--r--   1 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes   18 Sep 22  2015 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r--   1 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes  176 Sep 22  2015 .bash_profile
-rw-r--r--   1 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes  124 Sep 22  2015 .bashrc
drwxr-xr-x   2 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes 4096 Aug  4  2016 cache/
-rw-r-----   1 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes   20 Jan  4 14:10 .contactemail
drwx------   5 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes 4096 Mar 20 22:39 .cpanel/
drwx------   4 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes 4096 Aug  4  2016 .cphorde/
-rw-rw-r--   1 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes   15 Apr  3 13:26 .dns
drwxr-x---   2 jeatonhomes mail        4096 Jul 22  2016 etc/
-rw-------   1 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes   17 Mar  8 22:39 .ftpquota
drwxr-x---   2 jeatonhomes nobody      4096 Dec 18  2015 .htpasswds/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root        root        4096 Apr  3 13:45 images_temp/
-rw-------   1 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes  211 Jan  4 14:09 .lastlogin
drwx------   2 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes 4096 Apr  1 08:16 logs/
drwxr-x--x   8 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes 4096 Dec 18  2015 mail/
drwxrwxr-x   4 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes 4096 Jan  4 14:27 perl5/
drwxr-x---   3 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes 4096 Dec 18  2015 public_ftp/
drwxr-x---   7 jeatonhomes nobody      4096 Apr  3 06:06 public_html/
drwx------   2 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes 4096 Jan  4 14:10 .ssh/
drwxr-xr-x   5 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes 4096 Feb 15 06:34 ssl/
drwx------   2 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes 4096 Nov  3 22:55 .subaccounts/
drwxr-xr-x   7 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes 4096 Jul  6  2016 tmp/
drwx------   2 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes 4096 Dec 18  2015 .trash/
lrwxrwxrwx   1 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes   11 Dec 18  2015 www -> public_html/
-rw-r--r--   1 jeatonhomes jeatonhomes  658 Nov 10  2015 .zshrc

Also, I got this error:

jeatonhomes@jeatonhomes.com [~/public_html]# wp media import 
/home/jeatonhomes/images_temp/* --title="Images for East 46th West 59th and Sycamore Road" --alt="New Images  for April"
Warning: copy(/home/jeatonhomes/images_temp/62262529_0.jpg): failed to open stream: Permission denied in phar:///usr/local/bin/wp/php/commands/media.php on line 292
Error: Could not create temporary file for /home/jeatonhomes/images_temp/62262529_0.jpg.
jeatonhomes@jeatonhomes.com [~/public_html]# sudo wp media import /home/jeatonhomes/images_temp/* --title="Images for East 46th West 59th and Sycamore Road" --alt="New Images  for April"
[sudo] password for jeatonhomes:
sudo: wp: command not found

Best Answer

sudo mv folder1/* .

Your shell (so running as you, not root) is expanding (well, trying to expand) that folder1/* glob.

That results in a number of arguments to pass to sudo mv. However here, you (contrary to root) don't have read access to that directory, so the glob fails to match any file. Your shell is one of those broken (IMO) shells like bash or sh where when a glob doesn't match, it is passed as-is.

So instead of the shell returning an error to tell you it didn't find any file matching that pattern, it passed the folder1/* string literally as an argument to sudo mv. And mv complains that it can't find a file called folder1/* (thankfully harmless in this case).

Here, you'd want that glob to be expanded by root, so you'd need to start a shell as root to expand that glob:

sudo sh -c 'mv folder1/* .'

Related Solutions

How to use wildcards (*) when copying with scp

You need to pass a literal escape to scp to avoid the remote machine treating * as a glob (notice that it is doubly quoted):

scp 'SERVERNAME:/DIR/\*' .

Bash – Shell wildcards and dot files

By default, bash (the shell) doesn't expand a filename beginning with a dot (considered a hidden file) unless the dot is explicitly specified. Since [.] is a pattern, rather than a literal character, it doesn't trigger the display of hidden files and so ls -d [.][!.]?* doesn't match anything.

You can change this default behavior by running shopt -s dotglob, which sets the option to always includes hidden files when expanding filename patterns (known as "globbing").

Example (the dollar sign at the beginning of the line indicates the shell prompt; don't type it in):

$ touch .foo
$ ls -d .[!.]?*
.foo
$ ls -d [.][!.]?*
ls: cannot access [.][!.]?*: No such file or directory
$ shopt -s dotglob
$ ls -d [.][!.]?*
.foo

The issue with echo [D] is that expansion doesn't happen if no filename is matched. Since you didn't have a file named D when you tried it, echo was given, and echoed, what you literally entered.

An example of pathname expansion only occurring when a filename matches:

$ touch apple
$ echo a*
apple
$ rm apple
$ echo a*
a*

If you delete all of the files which match [D]*, then echo [D]* will give you [D]*.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

How to use wildcards (*) when copying with scp

Bash – Shell wildcards and dot files

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