I created a function and every time I execute the script it spawns thousands of processes until the box crashes. I am not sure what is going wrong. Any help is appreciated.
ping () {
for i in {1..254};
do
(ping -c1 -W1 10.0.0.$i)
done
while true;
do
read -rep $'What method do you want to use' method
if [ $method == "ping" ];
then
ping
else
echo "Wrong method"
done
Your function is recursing.
Use command ping to use the real ping command, rather than your function -- or, better, name it something other than ping.
That is:
# bad: shadows "ping" with a command that does something different
# ...but at least it doesn't recurse
ping() {
for ((i=1; i<=254; i++)); do
command ping -c1 -W1 "10.0.0.$i"
done
}
Or, better:
# good: name doesn't shadow the traditional ping command
pingAll() {
for ((i=1; i<=254; i++)); do
ping -c1 -W1 "10.0.0.$i"
done
}
if [ $method == "ping" ]should beif [ "$method" = ping ]. Expansions need to be quoted to prevent string-splitting and globbing; constant strings with values known not to contain literal spaces, glob characters, &c. don't. And==isn't a valid operator intest-- bash offers it as an extension, which is why your code is working when you test it, but POSIX only specifies=.{}button in the editor.(ping ...)contributed to the problem by running code in a subprocess, causing a fork -- otherwise this would have only had one process looping but not crashed the machine.