[vox-tech] Idea for 'tee' -- shut up already!

[Bill Kendrick]

On Fri, Dec 03, 2010 at 02:32:28PM -0800, Chris Jenks wrote:
>    What would screen do for you that opening a new terminal window 
> (alt-Fn) wouldn't do? I know you're an expert, so I just want to know what 
> I'm missing.

This was a process running remotely on a server I was SSH'd into.
I didn't want to have all the data transferring over the network, or
the terminal having to bother to scroll itself or keep its scrollback log.
I was done looking at 'tee's output, and didn't want to have to sit
through all 6.4M lines worth of it. :)

Honestly, once I did the "/dev/null" trick to silence the output, the
process finished up quite quickly.

With 'screen' I could do something that's bascially similar... detach the
screen session that was running with shell with the 'tee' output.


It'd be interesting (not that I have time to experiment) to see whether
things actually do run faster or slower in these situations:

  * tee -> stdout -> ssh -> my local terminal (e.g., Konsole)
  * tee -> stdout -> detached screen
  * tee -> /dev/null

That is, how much do:

  - sending data over network
  - my local terminal doing its thing (scrollback buffer, scrolling)
  - screen doing its thing

actually slow down the process (blocking stdout until they're
ready for more data?)


I admin, it's been a looong time since I've thought at this level.
(Like, Operating Systems class back in my Comp Sci schooling.
Remember Minix? :) )

-bill!