bash: syntax error near unexpected token '<'

Question

I am using this guide to install Ubuntu on my Chromebook via crouton.
It mentions a part about updating drivers and tells me to enter

<em><code>sudo apt-get install software-properties-common python-software-properties

but this returns:

bash: syntax error near unexpected token '<'

I assume this is because the terminal doesn't recognize '<'. If this is the case how should I make this work?

I just typed what was in the guide.

Answer 1

<em> and <code> are HTML tags controlling how text is displayed in the site. They leaked into the commands for some reason, and the page is full of such formatting errors:

sudo sh -e ~/Downloads/crouton -u -n <strong>chrootname</strong>

The <strong> tags shouldn't be there.

sudo apt-get upgrade</code></em>

Again, <code> and <em> tags shouldn't be present. And the <b> tag here:

sudo sh -e ~/Downloads/crouton -r <b>ubuntuversion</b> -t keyboard -u

& instead of & here:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

And probably other such mistakes. Consider looking for another guide or asking the author to fix these errors.

Answer 2

The command should be:

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common python-software-properties

If you will review the code snippet in that guide, you will see that it start with: <em><code> and ends with: </code></em> those headers aren't part of the actual commands which should be executed in Linux