Picking a MAC address for a FreedomBox

Posted Jan 22, 2013 0:32 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: Picking a MAC address for a FreedomBox by mcortese
Parent article: Picking a MAC address for a FreedomBox

that is the routine redirect combination that admins use when they don't plan to look at whatever output is generated and want it to be quiet. The result is that all output is thrown away.

Picking a MAC address for a FreedomBox

Posted Jan 22, 2013 1:04 UTC (Tue) by ABCD (subscriber, #53650) [Link]

No it isn't. command 2>&1 >/dev/null first copies fd 1 to fd 2 (thus sending stderr to where stdout is currently going), then sets fd 1 (stdout) to /dev/null. The standard "show me nothing" line is command >/dev/null 2>&1, which sets fd 1 to /dev/null, then copies fd 1 to fd 2.

To see the difference, compare the following:

$ to_stderr() { echo "$@" >&2; }
$ to_stderr test 2>&1 >/dev/null
test
$ to_stderr test >/dev/null 2>&1