Is there an easy way to log all activity that a shell script does?
There is a very easy and handy way:
Using script
to make typescript of terminal session
Start the command
script
If the argument
file
is given, egscript ~/tmp/output
,script
saves the dialogue in this file. If no filename is given, the dialogue is saved in the filetypescript
Start your script or what ever you want to start
If your script is finished, stop
script
via Ctrl-DCheck the output in the default output file
typescript
To start your command in one step with script
, use the parameter -c
-c COMMAND
Run the COMMAND rather than an interactive
shell. This makes it easy for a script to capture
the output of a program that behaves differently
when its stdout is not a tty.
The usage of script
inside your script makes no sense because script
forks the shell or starts a new shell.
If the variable SHELL exists, the shell forked by script will be that shell. If SHELL is not set, the Bourne shell is assumed. (Most shells set this variable automatically).
if you normally run your script with foo.sh
, try running it (assuming it's a bash script) with bash -x foo.sh
. If you want everything redirected to file, try bash -x foo.sh > file.log 2>&1
(note I'm redirecting stderr as well, remove the 2>&1
if you don't want this). If you also want to see what's going on, bash -x foo.sh 2>&1 | tee file.log
.