No output from shutdown when used within a shell script

Question

I have the following in a shell script

fulloutput="<pre>$(df -h /;sudo shutdown -r +1 )</pre>"

Later in the script I echo this variable (it's piped to sendmail but that's irrelevant here) but I only get the output from the df command, not the shutdown.

I have tried without sudo and I have tried separating the commands like follows...

fulloutput="<pre>$(df -h /) $(sudo shutdown -r +1 )</pre>"

But still only get the output from the df command.

It's not a big issue, but it would be nice to get the output from shutdown as an indicator that that part of my script has executed succesfully.

Answer 1

Your command substitution captures stdout; the shutdown message is likely written to stderr.

To redirect stderr to stdout so that it is captured as well, add 2>&1 i.e.

$(df -h /; sudo shutdown -r +1 2>&1)