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Shell Scripting Projects

The best way to master shell scripting is by building real-world projects. Here is a list of practical script ideas ranging from beginner to advanced. Use these to practice conditionals, loops, APIs, and file parsing.

1. System Health Monitor​

Goal: Create a script that checks critical system metrics and alerts you if they exceed a threshold.

Key Features:

  • Use df -h to check disk space.
  • Use free -m to check RAM usage.
  • Use uptime or top to check CPU load.
  • If disk space is over 90%, use logger or append to a log file.
  • Advanced: Use curl to send a webhook alert to Discord or Slack.

2. Bulk File Renamer​

Goal: A script that renames multiple files in a directory based on user input.

Key Features:

  • Accept command-line arguments for the directory, a prefix, and a file extension.
  • Use a for loop to iterate through the files.
  • Use string manipulation to rename files (e.g., changing image1.jpg to holiday_image1.jpg).
  • Advanced: Implement a "dry run" mode (using a flag parsed by getopts) that only prints what would be renamed without actually modifying the files.

3. Automated User Manager​

Goal: A script for system administrators to quickly create, modify, or delete Linux users.

Key Features:

  • Use a case statement to provide a menu (1. Add User, 2. Delete User, 3. Change Password).
  • Ask for user input using read.
  • Use useradd and userdel commands.
  • Ensure the script checks if it's running as root before executing (check if EUID is 0).

4. API Weather Fetcher​

Goal: Create a script that fetches the current weather for a specified city using a public API.

Key Features:

  • Use curl or wget to make an HTTP GET request to a service like wttr.in.
  • Example command: curl wttr.in/London?format=3
  • Accept the city name as a command-line argument.
  • Use jq (if installed) to parse JSON responses from more complex weather APIs.

5. Log Analyzer​

Goal: A script that parses web server logs (like Nginx or Apache) to find suspicious activity.

Key Features:

  • Read an access.log file line by line or using tools like awk and grep.
  • Count the number of 404 (Not Found) errors.
  • Identify the top 5 IP addresses that made requests.
  • Advanced: Generate an HTML or Markdown report summarising the findings.

Structuring Larger Projects​

When you move beyond single-file scripts, consider this directory structure for your projects:

my_project/
|-- bin/           # The executable script itself
|-- conf/          # Configuration files (.conf or .env)
|-- lib/           # Helper scripts/functions to be sourced
|-- logs/          # Directory for log files
|-- README.md      # Documentation

You can import functions from lib/ into your main script using the source command:

source ./lib/utils.sh