modify multiple .htaccess files at once?

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.

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

Code:

---

#!/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.

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. :)

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.

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.

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

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

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 ;)

Code:

---

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

---

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

a replacement thing can be done in a simmilar way

Code:

---

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

Code:

---

sed -e "s/userid_b, //"

---

</edit>

Hi ya'll, this is my first post here. I've been using a find/perl line for years to accomplish what you want. Here it is:

Code:

---

find /some/starting/dir -type f -name '.htaccess' -depth \
-exec perl -pi.BAK \
-e 's#Require user userid_a, userid_b, userid_c#Require user userid_a, userid_c#g' {} \;

---

For each .htacess file found perl will first create a .htaccess.BAK file for those "oh crap I made a big mistake" times. :) I hope it's helpful to you.

Quote:

---

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

---

Dunno about the general feeling, but PHP doesn't hold a candle to Perl in terms of pattern searching and replacing speed and functionality. Perl really is designed as a commandline scripting language, PHP is largely a web based languages, so much of the language's capabilities focus on that.

The whole point of the shebang line though is to give you the ability to support whatever you like. If you find PHP is good for you, use it.

I have had a poopoo time with PHP CLI.
It's been a while so things may have changed but I remember getting frustrated and
running the PHP through LYNX as PHP CLI was causing my head to grey faster than
I would have liked.

IIRC it was simple CRON schedules of simple code but we were rushed and went with
what worked.

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by chsh
Dunno about the general feeling, but PHP doesn't hold a candle to Perl in terms of pattern searching and replacing speed and functionality. (...)

---

Sure, there's a world of difference between Perl and PHP - but lets not look at the differences but at the similarities instead. I think (or rather, I'd like your opinion on the matter) that with either one of them you could do 90% of the tasks you'd do with the other. If that's true, wouldn't that mean that most people could cope with just one of the languages?

same can be said about bash..

sure you'd need to use a lot of externall apps like sed, awk etc.. but hey.. it works..

Bash would be severly platform-dependant though.

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by Guus
Sure, there's a world of difference between Perl and PHP - but lets not look at the differences but at the similarities instead. I think (or rather, I'd like your opinion on the matter) that with either one of them you could do 90% of the tasks you'd do with the other. If that's true, wouldn't that mean that most people could cope with just one of the languages?

---

Sure, the functionality exists, but just because it exists in the language doesn't necessarily mean that it's entirely simple to make use of it. It's just simpler to write perl scripts to parse log files for instance. Perl is also faster at a lot of things more common to command line scripting.
PHP on the CLI is also a slightly different animal than it is as a web language, so again you're still having to learn new stuff, and IMO if you're learning new stuff anyways, why not just go for the gusto and pick up a language designed around the idea of data extraction and report generation that has all the filesystem crawling functionality you need?
As for cross-platform capability, you won't find it easy to do cross-platform work on PHP either, and IIRC there are some security hazards to doing PHP command scripting on Windows.
Again, it's just my opinion, and really if you don't have the time that's perfectly understandable. At some point you should make the time however.