Upstart If Statements Executing Illogically

Question

I made an upstart script which breaks my expectations entirely.

stupid-test.conf

script
  VALUE="PONG"
  echo "START" >> /var/log/stupid-test.log
  if [ "$VALUE" == "PONG" ]; then
    echo "GOOD PONG" >> /var/log/stupid-test.log
  fi
  if [ "$VALUE" != "PONG" ]; then
    echo "BAD PONG" >> /var/log/stupid-test.log
  fi
  if [ "$VALUE" == "PING" ]; then
    echo "BAD PING" >> /var/log/stupid-test.log
  fi
  if [ "$VALUE" != "PING" ]; then
    echo "GOOD PING" >> /var/log/stupid-test.log
  fi
  echo >> /var/log/stupid-test.log
end script

stupid-test.log

START
GOOD PING

Naturally, if you execute the exact same commands in bash, it works perfectly:

START
GOOD PONG
GOOD PING

This appears to work for anything you can put in VALUE--I've tried integers and strings.

Answer 1

Use = rather than == when performing equality tests. == is a bash extension, and it's not available in the shell that upstart runs. Upstart runs all scripts using /bin/sh -e. On Ubuntu systems, /bin/sh is dash, not bash.