Should stderr output be disabled by default?

[atc0005]

Background

When implementing plugins in this project I personally found it useful to have stderr output enabled by default. I managed a Nagios v3 instance which ignores stderr output, so emitting the output didn't negatively impact the operation of the console (local logs or content shown in the web UI).

As of GH-314 I learned that Icinga Web 2 collects both stdout (expected) and stderr (unexpected) and combines them into a unified output listing.

The workaround is to explicitly use the --log-level "disabled" CLI flag when defining service check commands for plugins in this project. This leaves the stdout content emitted for Nagios (or Icinga & similar systems) intact, while turning off the details intended for review by sysadmins that which to execute the plugins directly for testing/troubleshooting.

How to provide feedback

Would you like to have stderr output disabled by default?

• Upvote for "yes"
• Downvote for "no"
  • I am not impacted by log output sent to stderr by default
  • It is acceptable to explicitly disable it via the --log-level "disabled" CLI flag

References

• https://nagios-plugins.org/doc/guidelines.html
• https://www.monitoring-plugins.org/doc/guidelines.html
• https://icinga.com/docs/icinga-2/latest/doc/05-service-monitoring/