RECOMMENDATIONS Storing a CLI output to a variable

[Stewart]

I'm trying to write some scripts that allow greater logging and notification but for some reason can't get my commands to store the results in a variable. Running:

asterisk -rx "core show uptime"

results in:
System uptime: 37 minutes, 23 seconds
Last reload: 37 minutes, 23 seconds

But if I run either

VAR1=$(/usr/sbin/asterisk -rx "core show uptime") | echo $VAR1

or

VAR1=$(/usr/sbin/asterisk -rx "core show uptime" | grep uptime) | echo $VAR1

I get what seems to be a blank line.

Any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong?

 

[matthew]

Replace the pipe into "echo" with a semi-colon.

VAR1=$(/usr/sbin/asterisk -rx "core show uptime") ; echo $VAR1

 

[Stewart]

That works. Why the ; and not the | ?

 

[PBX@Home]

My guess is that the programming scope of this is likely as this:

Statement 1 | Statement 2

Statement 1 may use variables but Statement 2 would not "see" them as such. I did not know about ;

I'm just throwing my two-cents around.

 

[Hyksos]

http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Pipelines
3.2.2
3.2.3

In your context piping "VAR1=$(/usr/sbin/asterisk -rx "core show uptime" | grep uptime)"
into this:
"echo $VAR1"`
makes no sense, but doing them one after the other sequentially, does make sense.

 

[Stewart]

OK. So now I've come to the point that I have the scripts all running, but not when called from the web interface. So:
I have a button on a page that edits a text file. - This works.
I have a cron job that runs every minute and checks the file. - This works.
This cron job then launches a script to restart asterisk services. - This works BUT the line

  /usr/sbin/amportal stop gracefully

doesn't do anything.

If I run the script manually it works so I'm thinking either permissions or pathing issues. It's being called by cron so maybe it doesn't have the permissions? Any ideas? Should be simple I guess. Thanks.