modify multiple .htaccess files at once?

[KorpDeath]

Okay, I've got a problema folks. I have about 44 .htaccess files in 44 different directories that I need to change. Is there an easy way to modify all of these at the same time?

I'm sure there's a cute script somebody has . . . maybe. . .

Let me know, I'd rather not have to do this one at a time, and trust me it's not that I'm lazy it's just I've got fires burning all around me and I'd rather just be able to push a button and remove access for certain people. If you know what I mean....

Thanks for any and all help in this matter.

<edit> Obviously this is Linux and Apache I'm talking about.

[Guus]

I'm hardly a bashscript wizz (so be sure to make backups of your original files!) but something like this might be useful:

#!/bin/bash
while read line
do
  echo ${line#$1}
done
exit 0

If you save this to say removeStuff.sh and chmod 700 it, you'd use it like this:

./removeStuff.sh TOBEDELETED &lt; FILE

You'd get a screendump of FILE with the first occurrence of TOBEDELETED removed from each line.

Note that your original file is not overwritten and that this processes just one file, but if used in a(nother) script, it would at least save you some time.

[chsh]

Korp, no offense, but a general observation of all the recent questions you've asked about administering systems, I'd encourage you to learn Perl. A decent scripting language is a necessity for manageable administration, and you can do things like what you have asked about here in Perl in a very small script.

Sorry if this seems off topic, but it can really save you a lot of time.

[KorpDeath]

None taken. I absolutely have every intention of learning not only Perl, but PHP and a few other things. If this wasn't an emergency I'd just take my time and read tons to get the "kungfu" myself but I don't have the luxury, ya know.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestion. I know I may seem like a newb in some of these areas but I've never had this amount of exposure to *nix network administration.

[Guus]

Hmm, while on that subject: what's the general feeling here about using PHP with the command line interface?

I played around with it, and I find it quite useful (instead of #!/bin/bash you do #!/bin/php and be on your way).

Is it useful to adopt CLI PHP as an substitution for Perl? In KorpDeaths case, the learning curve would be less steap: instead of two languages, he has to learn but one.

[KorpDeath]

I'm all in favor of making things easier for myself...

[MrNiceGuy]

Some elaboration on how you need the .htaccess files modified would certainly help.

[the_JinX]

If you'd like to add a line to all .htaccess files, there is a realy easy way..

this can just be enterd in bash.. bash allows multiline stuff, so no script needed..
it should add the word addition to all the .htaccess files

for htfile in `locate .htaccess`
do
   echo "addition" >> "$htfile"
done

[Guus]

The problem is that you want to remove a name from a single line like this:

Require user userid_a, userid_b, userid_c

has to become:

Require user userid_a, userid_c

As far as I know, you can't get the same result by adding a line. You could construct something with Deny, but that directive doesn't take a userid in its syntax.

More information in the Apache documentation at http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/howto/auth.html

[the_JinX]

a replacement thing can be done in a simmilar way

for htfile in `locate .htaccess`
do
   mv "$htfile" "$htfile.bak"
   cat "$htfile.bak" | sed -e "s/old/new/" > "$htfile"
done

would for example change "old" into "new" ( and make a backup .htaccess.bak )

<edit type="add">
To do what Guus suggested you'd have to do a

sed -e "s/userid_b, //"

</edit>