KfW 3.1: Re-directed stderr of kinit/klist displays dialog

[petesea@bigfoot.com]

On Tue, 20 Feb 2007, Jeffrey Altman wrote:

> petesea at bigfoot.com wrote:
>
>> Is there a way to redirect stderr from kinit/klist to a file?
>
> stdin and stderr cannot be redirected.  they are used for password 
> prompting

Hmmm.... but I'm not trying to redirect the password prompt... in fact, 
kinit won't let me redirect the password prompt, it still displays it in 
the shell (NOT as a Windows dialog):

   C:\> kinit 2>err.our
   Password for bozo at CLOWN.COM:

That's fine.... and I'm not suggesting it should work any different... for 
the password prompt that is...

But if I'm using "kinit -kt" or "klist" or "kdestroy"... (none of which 
should prompt for a password or require any keyboard input), then I think 
you should be able to redirect stderr.

Unfortunately, if I try to run any of those commands and I get an error 
AND stderr is re-directed then I get a Windows dialog instead.

   C:\> kinit -kt foobar 2>err.out
   (Windows dialog with error, nothing in err.out)

The problem is, if you're running an automated background job using a 
keytab and something's wrong (eg the keytab is missing), it makes it VERY 
difficult to find the problem.  You can't redirect stderr because that 
triggers a Windows dialog which could cause the background job to hang 
waiting for user input it's never going to get.  Or if it doesn't hang, 
there's no way to log the error to see why it failed.