Re: Output from the miniserver on commandline

[Ryan W. M. <ry...@gu...>]

Andres,

Yes, this is a problem with your module.  You're not catching all of the
output.  Take for example a command such as this:

  if (`rpm -q <package>`) {
    do_this();
  }

If this is run and the package is not installed, you'll get a message such
as this spit to the first open console:

  package <package> is not installed

The proper workaround is to use standard shell tricks to trap the output:

  if (`rpm -q <package> > /dev/null 2>&1`) {
    do_this();
  }

Hope this helps.  The same goes for system()'s and the such; all you're
really doing is spawning an external shell so the standard shell tricks
apply.

Cheers,
Ryan

 +-- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --+
   Ryan W. Maple                                Guardian Digital, Inc.
   "If you eliminate the redundancy, sleep is a four letter word." -CW
 +-- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --+


On Mon, 23 Apr 2001, Andreas Gruber wrote:

> Hallo!
> 
> I have detected a kind of unfriendly behaviour of the miniserv of
> Webmin. It occurs quite often when I call external commands within my
> webmin module. Whenever the Webmin module (or the external command)
> prints some output not to the resulting webpage but to STDERR I suppose.
> The output appears somewhere on the system. Usually it appears on the
> console I previously started the webmin miniserv from. But sometimes,
> and this can really be annoying on systems several people work on, these
> outputs appear on just any other console.
> 
> Is it possible to divert all these outputs to a defined point?
> (/dev/null)