From: Matt Harrison <iwasinnamuknow@...>
Date: 2009-12-14T04:02:35+09:00
Subject: getting shell output

I'm trying to write a script that automates some backups using dump. The
script works well for the most part but I'm having problems getting the
output of dump to send in the email.

I appears that dump writes all of its status output to stderr, and I can
redirect that on the command line using "2>&1" to get it into a file. I'm
unable however to find something similar for ruby.

I've tried backticks (``), %x{}. system() and exec() as well as IO.popen()
but they all fail to intercept the stderr output. I've even tried adding
"2>&1" to the command but it makes no difference.

Interestingly, other programs that output to stderr, such as usage messages
for many programs, will let me capture the stderr output using the same
methods.

Can anyone enlighten me as to why dump is different or another approach I
could take to trap this output?

many thanks

Matt