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How to install SHC on your Linux system

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SHC stands for Generic shell script compiler. Created by Francisco Javier Rosales García, shc creates a stripped binary executable version of the script specified with -f on the command line. The binary version will get a .x extension appended and will usually be a bit larger in size than the original ascii code. Generated C source code is saved in a file with the extension .x.c .

In a simple word, SHC compile your Bash script into binary so no one can see your code.

And here’s step by step how to install SHC (I use Ubuntu 12.04 LTS) :

  1. Download the latest version of SHC at here

  2. Put the package at your home (~) directory

  3. Extract the tarball : 

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    adee@thinkpad:~$ tar -xzvf shc-3.8.9.tgz
    shc-3.8.9/CHANGES
    shc-3.8.9/Copying
    shc-3.8.9/match
    shc-3.8.9/pru.sh
    shc-3.8.9/shc-3.8.9.c
    shc-3.8.9/shc.1
    shc-3.8.9/shc.README
    shc-3.8.9/shc.html
    shc-3.8.9/test.bash
    shc-3.8.9/test.csh
    shc-3.8.9/test.ksh
    shc-3.8.9/makefile

  4. Step inside into the shc folder and do the ‘make’ command :

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    adee@thinkpad:~$ cd shc-3.8.9/
    adee@thinkpad:~/shc-3.8.9$ make
    make: *** No rule to make target `shc.c', needed by `shc'.  Stop.

  5. As you see above, there’s an error about missing file named ‘shc.c’ Actually the ‘shc.c’ is already there, we just have to rename / duplicate it into the right name :

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    adee@thinkpad:~/shc-3.8.9$ cp shc-3.8.9.c shc.c
    adee@thinkpad:~/shc-3.8.9$ make
    cc -Wall  shc.c -o shc
    *** �Do you want to probe shc with a test script?
    *** Please try... make test

  6. Ok, then we shall continue to ‘make install’ command (need sudo):

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    adee@thinkpad:~/shc-3.8.9$ sudo make install
    *** Installing shc and shc.1 on /usr/local
    *** �Do you want to continue? y
    install -c -s shc /usr/local/bin/
    install -c -m 644 shc.1 /usr/local/man/man1/
    install: target `/usr/local/man/man1/' is not a directory: No such file or directory
    make: *** [install] Error

  7. Something sucks occurs again. It’s looks like there’s no such directory named ‘/usr/local/man/man1/‘. So what should we do? Simple, just create that folder and repeat again the make install command. It should works now!

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    adee@thinkpad:~/shc-3.8.9$ sudo mkdir /usr/local/man/man1
    adee@thinkpad:~/shc-3.8.9$ sudo make install
    *** Installing shc and shc.1 on /usr/local
    *** �Do you want to continue? y
    install -c -s shc /usr/local/bin/
    install -c -m 644 shc.1 /usr/local/man/man1/

  8. Next, we have to move the shc binary file into /bin and give it the excecutable bit :

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    adee@thinkpad:~/shc-3.8.9$ sudo cp shc /bin/shc
    adee@thinkpad:~/shc-3.8.9$ sudo chmod +x /bin/shc

  9. OK Done! SHC is installed into your system. To test it, try type ‘shc’ at the terminal, and it should looks like this :

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    adee@thinkpad:~/shc-3.8.9$ shc 
    shc Usage: shc [-e date] [-m addr] [-i iopt] [-x cmnd] [-l lopt] [-rvDTCAh] -f script

OK on the next few days, i will write an article about the usage of SHC. So stay tuned :-)

Posted by Adi Riswan