There’s probably a bunch of permissions errors, filesystems warnings for cross-filesystem mounts or links, etc. all going to stderr. Linux output streams are a bit odd, 1 is stdout and 2 is stderr. So the command is redirecting the “noise” to null and just printing the actual command output. That would be my assessment, but OP could probably give a more correct answer…!
Pardon my stupidity BUT why include stdout to Devnull? Why not omit and simply ‘du -sh /home’
There’s probably a bunch of permissions errors, filesystems warnings for cross-filesystem mounts or links, etc. all going to stderr. Linux output streams are a bit odd, 1 is stdout and 2 is stderr. So the command is redirecting the “noise” to null and just printing the actual command output. That would be my assessment, but OP could probably give a more correct answer…!
Nope, you are exactly on.
Noob, just use sudo, less chars!
Oddly enough, still generates errors. (There are stuff in user directories that are set to 600… so even root can’t browse/open.)
Well now I have to try this. Missing that executable bit would make sense. But last time I did this on / I didn’t get errors 🤔
Are you sure? Root can see everything.
On a network, it can’t.
NFS mount probably.
There’s also some stuff in Proc and run that won’t let you.
2> means stderr… Keeps the “can’t access …” Out of the display.
That’s stderr, not stdout