Posted by sibu on March 8, 2009
Define “/dev/null 2>&1″
some_prog > /dev/null 2>&1
2 = standard error
1 = standard outout
The first part
“> /dev/null” means send standard output to the ‘bit bucket” or in other words, throw it away.
Second part
2> redirects STDERR to the specified file.
& only means to run the process in the background if it appears at the end of the line. 2>&1 redirects STDERR to STDOUT. Since in this case, STDOUT is being redirected to /dev/null,
2>&1 causes both STDERR and STDOUT to /dev/null.
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