[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] shell ouput which file descriptor

[walt <w41ter@gmail.com>]

On 04/09/2010 08:19 AM, Harry Putnam wrote:
> This is not a question about cvs... its only used for example.
>
> I'm puzzled about a change in what I see when I run
>     cvs -n update 2>  /dev/null
>
> I've apparently lost the ability to remove stder from output.
>
> I used that command to trim out file descriptor 2 which used to leave
> a list of any changed files in the repo on the console, for a very
> long time.
>
>
> Suddenly there is no difference with:
>
>        cvs -n update 2>  /dev/null
>           cvs -n update
>
> The stuff on stderr still shows in the ouput either way.
>
> Further;
>    cvs -n update 2>er  (redirect stder to ./er)
>
> Doesn't put anything in ./er
>
> However cvs -n update 1>out   (redirect stdout to ./out)
>
> Does catch the output I'm after and leave out stderr. (as one would
> expect)
>
> So, again, apparently I've lost the ability to trim out stderr with a
> redirect to /dev/null (cvs -n update 2>  /dev/null)
>
> -------        ---------       ---=---       ---------      --------
>
> The only thing I've been tinkering with is evaluating the
> /etc/DIR_COLORS file.  I switched from evaluating a custom version to
> evaluating the default version.

I have no helpful advice, but I would try a couple of simple experiments:

I have this in my home directory because I'm color blind:
-rw-r--r--  1 wa1ter users       0 2007-08-27 18:29 .dir_colors

$cat nonexistantfile
cat: nonexistantfile: No such file or directory

$cat nonexistantfile 2> /tmp/testfile
$

$cat /tmp/testfile
cat: nonexistantfile: No such file or directory

Are you running cvs as root, or user, or ...?