redirect and log script output

Question

I am trying to tidy up the following snippets, design goals are to log all output from a script, and should not be a wrapper. Less lines are better.

I don't care about user inputs (at this stage), target scripts are run non-interactively.

The snippet needs to

• output stdout to log, and always echo to console
• output stderr to log, and echo to console iff debugging is enabled
• stderr messages should be prefixed with time stamps and other usefulness

At the moment I have the following which only tests out under recent versions of bash (4.2+?) like in Ubuntu precise, but misbehaves on CentOS6.

DEBUG_LOG="${0##*/}.log"

# copy stdout to log always and echo to console
exec >  >(tee -a ${DEBUG_LOG})           

# copy stderr to log only, unless debugging is enabled
[ $DEBUG_TEST = "true" ] \
  && exec 2> >(tee -a ${DEBUG_LOG} >&2) \
  || exec 2>> ${DEBUG_LOG}

Then this...

# Expand escaped characters, wrap at 70 chars on spaces, 
# and indent wrapped lines
msg_log() { 
  echo -e "$(date +%T) ${0##*/}: $1" \
    | fold -w70 -s | sed '2~1s/^/  /' >&2; 
}
msg_con() { 
  if [ "${DEBUG_TEST}" = "true" ]; then 
    msg_log "$1"
  else
    echo -e "$1" | fold -w70 -s | sed '2~1s/^/  /'; 
  fi
}

Instead of echo I can call one of those msg procedures, e.g., msg_con "hello world".
Also script output will then go to stderr by setting as an environment variable at call time, e.g., DEBUG_TEST=true myscript.

I have read that exec may not work in some shells such as busybox. There is a mkfifo and fork combination at https://stackoverflow.com/a/5200754 that does something similar but I'd rather not use fork unless absolutely needed.

Prefer bash examples please, but something that works under sh or is more portable would be nice. Any ideas?

Answer 1

function startLogging {
    exec > >(gawk -v pid=$$ '{ print strftime("%F-%T"),pid,$0; fflush(); }' | tee -a $logfile)
    [ ! -z "$DEBUG" ] && exec 2>&1 || exec 2> >(gawk -v pid=$$ '{ print strftime("%F-%T"),pid,$0; fflush(); }' >>$logfile)
    echo "=== Log started for $$ at $(date +%F-%T) ==="
}

You need to have $logfile set to something

Answer 2

exec > filename should work in sh, and it actually works in busybox v1.15.3 (Nov 2011). But the process substitution >(command) is unportable since it's bash extension. Just avoid using it in scripts. Why >> isn't enough for you?

exec 1>>${DEBUG_LOG}
exec 2>>${DEBUG_LOG}

---

Another solution is to specify redirection outside of your scripts. When your script is invoked in background (by cron, or system script, etc.), they should be called like this

./my_script 1>>${DEBUG_LOG} 2>>${DEBUG_LOG}

When you invoke the script manually and you want to see the output, just call it without redirections.

Answer 3

These two examples will do what your stated objectives are

echo -n $(date) >> $DEBUG_LOG
command 2>&1 | tee -a $DEBUG_LOG

or

echo -n $(date) >> $DEBUG_LOG
command >> $DEBUG_LOG 2>&1

Answer 4

You could use tee command or script command both are really useful.