Plain Text to Unix Executable File?

[ElectricMan5]

I just downloaded a World of Warcraft patch, and whenever I opened the updater it would instantly close. The icon doesn't even have a chance to appear in the dock, but i see the dock get a bit bigger and the little light that appears underneath the icon flickers.

I looked at the contents of the update, and in the "MacOS" folder, the file called Installer, which on other patches is a Unix Executable File, is a Plain Text file.

I didn't know if this was the problem, so I took the same file from another patch and replaced the plain text with the unix executable file, and the window appeared, though of course since it was from another patch, it wouldn't update.

So how do I convert that plain text file to a unix executable file?

 

[mkrishnan]

Open a terminal window, cd to the folder in question, and then...

chmod 755 thenameofthefile

 

[ElectricMan5]

Open a terminal window, cd to the folder in question, and then...

chmod 755 thenameofthefile

Haha yeah I figured it out myself. I did chmod xy+ or something... but otherwise it works.

I'm still returning an error though installing... hmm... probably something wrong with WoW itself.

 

[sammich]

That's weird. Maybe you have to download the patch again? What extension does that plain text have? What is in it if you open it in textedit.

EDIT: well I guess I'll leave this comment here anyway.
And that terminal command will make a 'script' executable, but it does not turn a script into an executable, right? An executable will have a black 'terminal' entry icon and a plain text/no extension file appears as a plain white file icon.

 

[mathcolo]

Open a terminal window, cd to the folder in question, and then...

chmod 755 thenameofthefile

chmod 755?

You should just be able to add the executable flag to the file by doing:

chmod +x thenameofthefile

 

[mkrishnan]

chmod 755?

You should just be able to add the executable flag to the file by doing:

chmod +x thenameofthefile

Old habits....

 

[ElectricMan5]

chmod 755?

You should just be able to add the executable flag to the file by doing:

chmod +x thenameofthefile

Yeah that's exactly what I did. Now I'm just getting an error updating... says "Preparing to update" then it just crashes. It did it before also on the same patch from a different host...

 

[gilkisson]

If you didn't want to change permissions on the file itself:

bash thenameofthefile

Which will cause the bash shell to execute the file...