strip command's errors confuse newbies

[nathanladd@…]

At the end of the book, when the reader executes the big strip command to save some space, a bunch of non-binary files try to get stripped. This isn't a big deal; strip ignores them and gives an "unrecognized filetype" error. The problem is that a lot of these errors get produced, and to a newbie it looks like something went wrong. A note to the reader should be thrown in, like this: NOTE: While this command gets executed, strip will attempt to strip many files that aren't binaries. As a result, it will spit out an error message complaining about an unrecognized file type for each of these files. It is safe to disregard these errors; the actual binaries will get stripped.

[tushar@…]

or redirect error messages to /dev/null?

[iwanek@…]

couldnt we make a wrapper using the file command so as to avoid the confusing messages but still show real error messages?

[nathanladd@…]

I think redirecting error messages to /dev/null would be a good idea, but seeing > /dev/null is like a big, well-lit sign saying "something is up here; this command is generating a good deal of output." Hence, a brief explanation should still be there, something like "this command will attempt to strip many files that aren't proper ELF binaries, and strip will give an error message for each of these files. These error messages are safe to ignore, so we redirect them to /dev/null.

[gerard@…]

A wrapper might be nice. This'll work:

for program_file in $(find $LFS/{,usr/,usr/local/}{bin,sbin,lib}); do

if $(file $program_file|grep -q ELF); then

strip --strip-debug $program_file

fi

done

[gerard@…]

Zack put it nicely: We decided the book isn't about catering to newbies, right? Well, let's not.