error message - openssl: command not found

Question

I am writing a simple script to check if the certificate for a website is valid. However, when I attempt to run the code in terminal, I receive an error message stating that the command openssl cannot be found. Here is the code:

if true | openssl s_client -connect www.google.com:443 2>/dev/null | \
  openssl x509 -noout -checkend 0; then
  echo "Certificate is not expired"
else
  echo "Certificate is expired"
fi

When I attempt to run this code, I receive this output:

./check-certificates.sh: line 6:  openssl: command not found
Certificate is expired

The code runs, but it does not recognise openssl as a valid command, so it skips over the line of code where this is mentioned, and defaults to outputting "Certificate is expired".

When using sudo apt-get install openssl I receive this message:

...
openssl is already the newest version (1.0.2g-1ubuntu4.15).
...

So it looks like openssl has been successfully installed. I'm at a loss on how to fix this - does anybody have any ideas?

---

As requested, here is the output of apropos openssl | grep "OpenSSL command line tool":

openssl (1ssl)       - OpenSSL command line tool

And locate openssl | grep /usr/bin:

usr/bin/openssl

Answer 1

Note the extra space in the error message:

./check-certificates.sh: line 6:  openssl: command not found

This means that the command that the shell is looking for isn’t openssl, it’s  openssl, probably with an unbreakable space pre-prended.

You need to edit your script to make absolutely sure that the space before openssl is a “normal” space, or even delete it.

See Why is this command not working: "ps aux | grep xscreensaver" for a similar instance with a bit more info.