save terminal scroll to file

crackpipe · 04-21-2009, 01:41 AM

I'd like to save what scrolls in my terminal into a file. Let's use "make" as an example. Suppose I run "make" to compile some program and I have thousands of lines of errors. I'd like to save the scrolled lines to a file to grep for specific content. So, I do something like this:

Code:

$ make > errors

. Instead of the thousands of lines of errors, all I will see is something like this

Code:

$cat errors
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.28.7/build SUBDIRS=/home/foo/Download/someprogram/Module modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.28.7'
  CC [M]  /home/foo/Download/some program/Module/main.o
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.28.7'

That is, all of the thousands of lines of code between "make" beginning and exiting are absent, so that something in my command does not capture what prints to the screen. Does someone know the command for how to capture everything from a terminal? In other words, this is not a "make" specific question; I'm uninterested in a "make" specific logging switch or some such. I'm interested in how to pipe anything scrolling on the screen to a file - I've used "make" only as an easy example here. Thanks.

colucix · 04-21-2009, 02:05 AM

make sends the messages to standard error. To save what you see on the terminal, redirect standard error to standard output and use tee as in

Code:

make 2>&1 | tee build.log

crackpipe · 04-21-2009, 02:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by colucix

make sends the messages to standard error. To save what you see on the terminal, redirect standard error to standard output and use tee as in

Code:

make 2>&1 | tee build.log

Many thanks; exactly what I'm looking for. This should work with a lot of circumstances, which is what I'm looking for. Going to have fun investigating "tee", I can see. Thanks.

Libu · 04-21-2009, 03:54 AM

Can also be done as:

Quote:

make > build.log 2>&1

Or if you want the errors in a separate file

Quote:

make >build.log 2>build_error.log