Changing a problem script to 777 never solves anything and has now made your script vulnerable to being trashed by anyone on your computer. Change it back to at least 755 to protect the contents. Note that changing the permission of a script won't change it's ability to search a directory (which is how the "not found" error is generated. It also does not matter what permissions realroot has -- even if it was 777 or 000 permission, the only way an error "not found" will occur is that the directory cannot be searched by the script, or that realroot is actually a symlink that points to a non-existant file.
Just a note about PATH and scripts: Never use the PATH that the parent program (shell) uses. You have no control over it since any user (including root) can modify it, either on purpose or by accident. Instead, the first few lines in your script should have:
export PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin
This takes eefect only for the current script and disappears when the script terminates. If you need anotgher path, add it to your script.
Another note about which and whereis. Neither command is useful in scripting or debugging. You want to know exactly what the shell will do when a a text string is seen. The commands which and whereis will fail to locate "for" and "done", yet they are perfectly valid items in a script. You want to use whence, or better yet, whence -v. To make things easier, whence -v is aliased to type in ksh and POSIX-sh. So to see what the shell will find when you refer to realroot, use this command:
type realroot
You may be (unpleasantly) surprised to see that it has been aliased, something that which and whereis will never tell you.
And while you're at it, add set -u next to the PATH statement in your script. It prevents disastrous consequences due to spelling errors.
Bill Hassell, sysadmin
