I've been away from programming for a bit - working in middleware. Is there a way to run a bash script from a jsp page? Is there a tutorial anywhere that would lead me in the right direction to do this?
You shouldn't be putting any Java code into a JSP page at this juncture.
If this must be done under control of a JSP (design red flag), then delegate the Java code to a custom tag or bean, within which you can use the normal Java exec mechanisms.