Feature request: add option to redirect stderr to a file

[carl-mastrangelo]

When sshfs is not run in the foreground, it appears that stderr is redirected to /dev/null. It would be nice if there was an option to forward this to a file, to make it easier to debug.

[Nikratio]

Thanks for the suggestion! It's not clear to me what advantage this has over running in the foreground (potentially redirecting stderr to some file before). Could you elaborate?

[carl-mastrangelo]

@Nikratio

The main thing to me was discoverability (i.e. making a command line option makes the user aware that it's possible). It wasn't obvious from the --help page where stdout went, or that it was related to being in the background or foreground. After looking through the source code, I eventually found where ssh's output was redirected, but it would have been easier if I didn't have to.

Another alternative is to call out where the pipes are connected in the man page. That would have given me the breadcrumb I needed to find out that it was foreground that I actually wanted.

Thoughts?

[Nikratio]

It's not mentioned anywhere in the SSHFS docs because it's a Unix default. If one process starts another, it gets the same stdin/stdout :-).

Happy to add it to the manpage though if you want to create a pull request.

[Nikratio]

I'm closing this issue for now. This isn't meant to be a rejection of the idea itself, it's just that there is little point in keeping enhancement/wishlist requests in the bug tracker that no-one intends to work on. (I want to use the tracker as a tool to manage ongoing work rather than a database of possible enhancements).