redirecting to /dev/null

Question

I'm reading an example bash shell script:

#!/bin/bash

# This script makes a backup of my home directory.

cd /home

# This creates the archive
tar cf /var/tmp/home_franky.tar franky > /dev/null 2>&1

# First remove the old bzip2 file.  Redirect errors because this generates some if the archive
# does not exist.  Then create a new compressed file.
rm /var/tmp/home_franky.tar.bz2 2> /dev/null
bzip2 /var/tmp/home_franky.tar

# Copy the file to another host - we have ssh keys for making this work without intervention.
scp /var/tmp/home_franky.tar.bz2 bordeaux:/opt/backup/franky > /dev/null 2>&1

# Create a timestamp in a logfile.
date >> /home/franky/log/home_backup.log
echo backup succeeded >> /home/franky/log/home_backup.log

I'm trying to understand the use of "/dev/null 2>&1" here. At first, I thought this script uses /dev/null in order to gracefully ignore errors, without causing the script to crash (kind of like try catch exception handling in programming languages). Because I don't see how using tar to compress a directory into a tar file could possibly cause any type of errors.

Answer 1

No, this will not prevent the script from crashing. If any errors occur in the tar process (e.g.: permission denied, no such file or directory, ...) the script will still crash.

Because using > /dev/null 2>&1 will redirect all your command output (both stdout and stderr) to /dev/null, meaning no outputs are printed to terminal.

By default:

stdin  ==> fd 0
stdout ==> fd 1
stderr ==> fd 2

In the script, you use > /dev/null causing:

stdin  ==> fd 0
stdout ==> /dev/null
stderr ==> fd 2

And then 2>&1 causing:

stdin  ==> fd 0
stdout ==> /dev/null
stderr ==> stdout

Answer 2

I'm trying to understand the use of "> /dev/null 2>&1" here.

(note that I added the redirection before /dev/null in your question.)

The above would redirect the STDOUT and STDERR to /dev/null. It works by merging the STDERR into the STDOUT. (Essentially all the output from the command would be redirected to the null device.)

... without causing the script to crash (kind of like try catch exception handling in programming languages).

It's not quite like a try/catch or anything. It simply silences any sort of output (including error) from the command.

Because I don't see how using tar to compress a directory into a tar file could possibly cause any type of errors.

It could result in errors for a number of reasons, including:

• Inadequate permissions on the file(s) you're attempting to archive or on the file that you're attempting to write to
• Lack of disk space in order to create the archive