i have this script below, and it works great except in some of the files it searches the serial number line wont be right or the ip# line wont be right, and when sed runs it errors and overwrites the file with a blank 1. is there a way to run sed and if sed doesnt find what you want have it echo "please replace the ip and serial# in $file manually" and then go to the next file and not write to the 1 it has open right now? here is the script hopefully you understand what im saying... #!/bin/bash clear echo "This script will change IP's from an old IP to a new IP in order for cPanel to work correctly." sleep 10 echo "what is the old ip: " read line oip="$line" echo "what is the new ip: " read line nip="$line" cp -f /etc/named.conf /var/named/backup/named.conf.backup echo "changing IP's in: /etc/named.conf" cat /var/named/backup/named.conf.backup | sed "s/$oip/$nip/g" > /etc/named.conf cp -f /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf /var/named/backup/httpd.conf.backup echo "changing IP's in: /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf" cat /var/named/backup/httpd.conf.backup | sed "s/$oip/$nip/g" > /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf cp -f /etc/hosts /var/named/backup/hosts.backup echo "changing IP's in: /etc/hosts" cat /var/named/backup/hosts.backup | sed "s/$oip/$nip/g" > /etc/hosts cd /var/named for i in *.db do todaydate=`date +%m%d%y%H%M` cp -f $i /var/named/backup/$i.backup sline=`grep -e "; serial" $i` snum=`echo $sline | cut -f1 -d' '` cat /var/named/backup/$i.backup | sed -e "s/$snum/$todaydate/" -e "s/$oip/$nip/" > $i echo "changing IP's in: $i" done echo "Done" echo "Please restart the machine followed by running /scripts/easyapache"

A lot of uuoc in this script. There are better ways to grab your current ip address BTW, given a dhcp client. One quick hack: function caddr() { awk ' BEGIN { while (("/sbin/ifconfig" | getline array[a++]) > 0) { } for (x in array) { if (array[x] ~ /eth0/) { z = split(array[x + 1], arr, ":") gsub(/[^0-9.]+/,"",arr[2]); print arr[2] } } }' return } Another hack for the saved address: function oaddr() { sv="/tmp/oaddr.sv" parm=$1 if [ -z "$parm" ] ; then caddr > $sv elif [ "$parm" = "old" ] ; then oaddr=`cat $sv` export oaddr fi return } Save the op of the shell function: Get old address: oaddr old Get new address: myadd=`caddr` Now you can change all of your cat pipes to sed to simple sed: sed 's/'"$oaddr"'/'"$myadd"'/g' file > tmpfile && cp tmpfile file You should not have a problem with sed overwriting files with blank lines... A way to possibly avoid this is to use: sed '/'"$oaddr"'/s/'"$oaddr"'/'"$myadd"'/' Where the match is dictated by lines containing the old address only.