Redirect stderr and stdout in Bash

Question

I want to redirect both stdout and stderr of a process to a single file. How do I do that in Bash?

Answer 1

bash your_script.sh 1>file.log 2>&1

1>file.log instructs the shell to send STDOUT to the file file.log, and 2>&1 tells it to redirect STDERR (file descriptor 2) to STDOUT (file descriptor 1).

Note: The order matters as liw.fi pointed out, 2>&1 1>file.log doesn't work.

Answer 2

The following functions can be used to automate the process of toggling outputs beetwen stdout/stderr and a logfile.

#!/bin/bash

    #set -x

    # global vars
    OUTPUTS_REDIRECTED="false"
    LOGFILE=/dev/stdout

    # "private" function used by redirect_outputs_to_logfile()
    function save_standard_outputs {
        if [ "$OUTPUTS_REDIRECTED" == "true" ]; then
            echo "[ERROR]: ${FUNCNAME[0]}: Cannot save standard outputs because they have been redirected before"
            exit 1;
        fi
        exec 3>&1
        exec 4>&2

        trap restore_standard_outputs EXIT
    }

    # Params: $1 => logfile to write to
    function redirect_outputs_to_logfile {
        if [ "$OUTPUTS_REDIRECTED" == "true" ]; then
            echo "[ERROR]: ${FUNCNAME[0]}: Cannot redirect standard outputs because they have been redirected before"
            exit 1;
        fi
        LOGFILE=$1
        if [ -z "$LOGFILE" ]; then
            echo "[ERROR]: ${FUNCNAME[0]}: logfile empty [$LOGFILE]"

        fi
        if [ ! -f $LOGFILE ]; then
            touch $LOGFILE
        fi
        if [ ! -f $LOGFILE ]; then
            echo "[ERROR]: ${FUNCNAME[0]}: creating logfile [$LOGFILE]"
            exit 1
        fi

        save_standard_outputs

        exec 1>>${LOGFILE%.log}.log
        exec 2>&1
        OUTPUTS_REDIRECTED="true"
    }

    # "private" function used by save_standard_outputs() 
    function restore_standard_outputs {
        if [ "$OUTPUTS_REDIRECTED" == "false" ]; then
            echo "[ERROR]: ${FUNCNAME[0]}: Cannot restore standard outputs because they have NOT been redirected"
            exit 1;
        fi
        exec 1>&-   #closes FD 1 (logfile)
        exec 2>&-   #closes FD 2 (logfile)
        exec 2>&4   #restore stderr
        exec 1>&3   #restore stdout

        OUTPUTS_REDIRECTED="false"
    }

Example of usage inside script:

echo "this goes to stdout"
redirect_outputs_to_logfile /tmp/one.log
echo "this goes to logfile"
restore_standard_outputs 
echo "this goes to stdout"

Answer 3

You can redirect stderr to stdout and the stdout into a file:

some_command >file.log 2>&1 

See http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/io-redirection.html

This format is preferred than the most popular &> format that only work in bash. In Bourne shell it could be interpreted as running the command in background. Also the format is more readable 2 (is STDERR) redirected to 1 (STDOUT).

EDIT: changed the order as pointed out in the comments

Answer 4

For situation, when "piping" is necessary you can use :

|&

For example:

echo -ne "15\n100\n"|sort -c |& tee >sort_result.txt

or

TIMEFORMAT=%R;for i in `seq 1 20` ; do time kubectl get pods |grep node >>js.log  ; done |& sort -h

This bash-based solutions can pipe STDOUT and STDERR separately (from STDERR of "sort -c" or from STDERR to "sort -h").

Answer 5

# Close STDOUT file descriptor
exec 1<&-
# Close STDERR FD
exec 2<&-

# Open STDOUT as $LOG_FILE file for read and write.
exec 1<>$LOG_FILE

# Redirect STDERR to STDOUT
exec 2>&1

echo "This line will appear in $LOG_FILE, not 'on screen'"

Now, simple echo will write to $LOG_FILE. Useful for daemonizing.

To the author of the original post,

It depends what you need to achieve. If you just need to redirect in/out of a command you call from your script, the answers are already given. Mine is about redirecting within current script which affects all commands/built-ins(includes forks) after the mentioned code snippet.

---

Another cool solution is about redirecting to both std-err/out AND to logger or log file at once which involves splitting "a stream" into two. This functionality is provided by 'tee' command which can write/append to several file descriptors(files, sockets, pipes, etc) at once: tee FILE1 FILE2 ... >(cmd1) >(cmd2) ...

exec 3>&1 4>&2 1> >(tee >(logger -i -t 'my_script_tag') >&3) 2> >(tee >(logger -i -t 'my_script_tag') >&4)
trap 'cleanup' INT QUIT TERM EXIT


get_pids_of_ppid() {
    local ppid="$1"

    RETVAL=''
    local pids=`ps x -o pid,ppid | awk "\\$2 == \\"$ppid\\" { print \\$1 }"`
    RETVAL="$pids"
}


# Needed to kill processes running in background
cleanup() {
    local current_pid element
    local pids=( "$$" )

    running_pids=("${pids[@]}")

    while :; do
        current_pid="${running_pids[0]}"
        [ -z "$current_pid" ] && break

        running_pids=("${running_pids[@]:1}")
        get_pids_of_ppid $current_pid
        local new_pids="$RETVAL"
        [ -z "$new_pids" ] && continue

        for element in $new_pids; do
            running_pids+=("$element")
            pids=("$element" "${pids[@]}")
        done
    done

    kill ${pids[@]} 2>/dev/null
}

So, from the beginning. Let's assume we have terminal connected to /dev/stdout(FD #1) and /dev/stderr(FD #2). In practice, it could be a pipe, socket or whatever.

• Create FDs #3 and #4 and point to the same "location" as #1 and #2 respectively. Changing FD #1 doesn't affect FD #3 from now on. Now, FDs #3 and #4 point to STDOUT and STDERR respectively. These will be used as real terminal STDOUT and STDERR.
• 1> >(...) redirects STDOUT to command in parens
• parens(sub-shell) executes 'tee' reading from exec's STDOUT(pipe) and redirects to 'logger' command via another pipe to sub-shell in parens. At the same time it copies the same input to FD #3(terminal)
• the second part, very similar, is about doing the same trick for STDERR and FDs #2 and #4.

The result of running a script having the above line and additionally this one:

echo "Will end up in STDOUT(terminal) and /var/log/messages"

...is as follows:

$ ./my_script
Will end up in STDOUT(terminal) and /var/log/messages

$ tail -n1 /var/log/messages
Sep 23 15:54:03 wks056 my_script_tag[11644]: Will end up in STDOUT(terminal) and /var/log/messages

If you want to see clearer picture, add these 2 lines to the script:

ls -l /proc/self/fd/
ps xf

Answer 6

LOG_FACILITY="local7.notice"
LOG_TOPIC="my-prog-name"
LOG_TOPIC_OUT="$LOG_TOPIC-out[$$]"
LOG_TOPIC_ERR="$LOG_TOPIC-err[$$]"

exec 3>&1 > >(tee -a /dev/fd/3 | logger -p "$LOG_FACILITY" -t "$LOG_TOPIC_OUT" )
exec 2> >(logger -p "$LOG_FACILITY" -t "$LOG_TOPIC_ERR" )

It is related: Writing stdOut & stderr to syslog.

It almost work, but not from xinted ;(