Error: integer expression expected

Question

I have written a script to determine the Load average on the server as follows:

#!/bin/bash

loadavg=`top -b -n1 | grep -i load | awk -F, '{print$4}'| awk -F: '{print $2}'`

if [ "${loadavg}" -le  1 ]
then
echo "OK - Load Average = ${loadavg} | Load_Average=${loadavg}"
exit 0;
elif [ "${loadavg}" -gt 1 ] && [ "${loadavg}" -le 2 ]
then
echo "WARNING - Load Average = ${loadavg} | Load_Average=${loadavg}"
exit 1;
elif [ "${loadavg}" -gt 2 ]
then
echo "CRITICAL - Load Average = ${loadavg} | Load_Average=${loadavg}"
exit 2;
else
echo "UNKNOWN - Load Average = NaN | Load_Average=NaN"
fi

When the script is executed, it displays following error:

./loadavg.sh
./loadavg.sh: line 5: [:  0.06: integer expression expected
./loadavg.sh: line 9: [:  0.06: integer expression expected
./loadavg.sh: line 13: [:  0.06: integer expression expected
UNKNOWN - Load Average = NaN | Load_Average=NaN

Answer 1

bash (contrary to ksh93 or zsh¹) can't do floating point arithmetics. awk can though, so you can do the whole thing in awk.

Also, you don't need to use top (and wait 1 second) to get the load. The canonical way to get the load is from uptime.

uptime | awk '{load=+$(NF-2)}
  load > 2 {print "CRITICAL: " load; exit 2}
  load > 1 {print "WARNING: " load; exit 1}
  {print "OK: " load; exit 0}
  END {if (!NR) {print "UNKNOWN"; exit 3}'
exit

---

^{1 In zsh though, you need to use the (( loadavg > 2 )) instead of [ "$loadavg" -gt 2 ] syntax for comparing non-integers}

Answer 2

top -b -n1 | grep -i load | awk -F, '{print$4}'| awk -F: '{print $2}' returns nada, hence your errors.

Answer 3

Your loadavg is null, causes syntax errors by [:

$ top -b n1 | grep -i load | awk -F, '{print$4}'| awk -F: '{print $2}'
<blank line here>

You must change it to:

$ top -b n1 | grep -i load | awk -F, '{print$4}'| awk -F: '{print $1}'
 0.24

However, you should use newer test in your script, it can handle this problem:

$ [[ "" -gt 1 ]] || echo "OK"
OK

With older [:

$ [ "" -gt 1 ] || echo "OK"
bash: [: : integer expression expected
OK

Updated

bash can not handle floating point numbers, so your comparison (even with new test [[..]]) will show errors.

You can use another tools to do this task, like bc, awk...

Example:

$ [[ $(echo "3 > 1" | bc -l) == 1 ]] && echo OK
OK
$[[ $(echo "3 < 1" | bc -l) == 1 ]] || echo Not OK
Not OK

Answer 4

First off, running top is more expensive than just grabbing "uptime".

$ uptime
 16:15:38 up 6 days, 23:22, 23 users,  load average: 0.99, 0.82, 0.70

Second, as @Stéphane Chazelas mentioned, bash doesn't like floating point arithmetic.

$ [[ "0.1" -lt 1 ]] 
bash: [[: 0.1: syntax error: invalid arithmetic operator (error token is ".1")

Fortunately, bash expansion can take care of that. From man bash:

   ${parameter%word}
   ${parameter%%word}
         Remove matching suffix pattern.  The word is expanded to produce a pattern just as in pathname expansion.   If
         the pattern matches a trailing portion of the expanded value of parameter, then the result of the expansion is
         the expanded value of parameter with the shortest matching pattern (the ``%'' case) or  the  longest  matching
         pattern  (the  ``%%'' case) deleted.  If parameter is @ or *, the pattern removal operation is applied to each
         positional parameter in turn, and the expansion is the resultant list.  If parameter is an array variable sub-
         scripted  with  @  or *, the pattern removal operation is applied to each member of the array in turn, and the
         expansion is the resultant list.

So it becomes pretty easy to strip out the decimal portions with "%.*"

$ la=`uptime | sed 's/.*average: \([0-9\.]*\).*/\1/'`
$ if [ ${la%.*} -lt 1 ]; then echo "OK - Load average is $la"; fi
OK - Load average is 0.42