Redirecting stderr from mailx

[Gary Cooper_1]

Within my script, I want to log/catch any errors that mailx may generate - in particular when it is supplied with an invalid recipient.
when I try to just redirect stderr it just seems to ignore it...

> ll | mailx -s "Test e-mail" bert 2> mail.stderr
> bert... User unknown
<$HOME>/dead.letter... Saved message in <$HOME>/dead.letter
>

Where $HOME is the home directory of the user account that I was logged in as.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Gary

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi Gary:

# ll | mailx -s "Test e-mail" xxx 1>>/tmp/mylog 2>&1

Regards!

...JRF...

[Gary Cooper_1]

Hi James,

It's been a long week! I don't know why I didn't redirect stdout as well in the first place.

As a matter of interest, why didn't my original command work?

Have a good week-end.

Thanks,

Gary

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again) Gary:

> As a matter of interest, why didn't my original command work?

The output messages you really wanted to collect are going to STDOUT not STDERR.

I could have suggested you do:

# # ll | mailx -s "Test e-mail" xxx 1>>/tmp/mylog

...and ignored STDERR entirely.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Dennis Handly]

>why didn't my original command work?

Because your assumptions and the programmer's about what goes to stderr were different.

With an interactive program like mailx, perhaps this is blurred.

Sometimes as JRF had, you should just log both.

[Gary Cooper_1]

Thanks for the assistance James.