mute $PID silences $PID---closing STDOUT and STDIN (or, if you
like, every file descriptor pointing to a terminal).
GUI applications often produce debugging or error output as they
run. If you start a GUI application from a terminal and forget to
redirect their output, these messages can clutter your
terminal. mute attaches to a running process and intervenes,
redirecting output to /dev/null.
Usage: mute [-tfandv] [-o TARGET] PID [FD ...]
-t only close FDs if they are ttys (if no FDs specified, will close all tty FDs)
-f close FDs unconditionally
-a append to TARGET rather than truncating
-n dry run; shows the GDB script to be used, but does not run it
-d debug mode (shows debugging output on stdout; repeat to increase output)
-v show version information and exit
-o TARGET redirect FDs to TARGET [default: /dev/null]
relative paths are relative to `mute`'s current directory, not PID's
FD can be a decimal number or one of stdout, stderr, or stdin
Running `mute PID` is the same as `mute -t PID stdout stderr`: FDs 1 and 2 will be
closed if they are tty FDs.
mute uses the GNU debugger, gdb, to intervene on processes. mute
will not work without gdb.
Autodetecting file descriptors that point at ttys with mute -t
currently depends on procfs, and will fail if /proc/PID/fd/ does
not exist.
All you really need is the mute
script. For a nicer, more formal install, you can download a release and do a standard install:
$ wget -q https://github.com/mgree/mute/releases/download/latest/mute-latest.tgz
$ tar xzf mute-latest.tgz
$ cd mute-*
$ ./configure
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking for gdb... yes
checking for mktemp... yes
checking for pandoc (for manpage)... yes
checking for gzip (for manpage)... yes
checking for expect (for tests)... yes
checking for sleep (for tests)... yes
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating Makefile
------------------------------------------------------------------------
mute version 0.1.0
Prefix: /usr/local
Compiling utilities:
To build and install, run:
make && make install
------------------------------------------------------------------------
$ make && make install
pandoc --standalone --from markdown-smart --to man -o man/mute.1 man/mute.1.md
gzip <man/mute.1 >man/mute.1.gz
/usr/bin/install -c -d /usr/local/bin
/usr/bin/install -c -m 755 mute /usr/local/bin
/usr/bin/install -c -d /usr/local/share/man/man1
/usr/bin/install -c -m 644 man/mute.1.gz /usr/local/share/man/man1As usual, you can use ./configure --prefix to control the installation prefix.
If you clone the repo, you will need
to run autoconf to generate the configure script, which will
generate the Makefile.
You can run the test suite using ./run_tests.sh or make test.
$ make test
./run_tests.sh
RUNNING ALL 17 TESTS FOR mute
SCRIPT TEST force.explicit12.sh: PASS
SCRIPT TEST force.only1.sh: PASS
SCRIPT TEST saved.123.sh: PASS
SCRIPT TEST saved.12.sh: PASS
SCRIPT TEST error.badpid.sh: PASS
SCRIPT TEST force.output.sh: PASS
SCRIPT TEST racy.force.implicit12.sh: PASS
SCRIPT TEST force.names.sh: PASS
SCRIPT TEST force.output.append.sh: PASS
SCRIPT TEST force.implicit12.sh: PASS
SCRIPT TEST saved.321.sh: PASS
EXPECT TEST auto.saved.allttys.exp: PASS
EXPECT TEST auto.names.exp: PASS
EXPECT TEST auto.saved.implicit12.exp: PASS
EXPECT TEST auto.implicit12.exp: PASS
EXPECT TEST auto.notty1.implicit12.exp: PASS
EXPECT TEST auto.explicit12.exp: PASS
SUMMARY: PASSED 17/17 TESTS, FAILED 0 TESTSThe run_tests.sh script accepts filters on its arguments in case you
would like to run a particular test.
All contributions must be signed off as
GPLv3, i.e., a PR
must include a Signed-off-by: line.
Project-specific lints are run in run_lints.sh; PRs that do not pass
the linter will not be accepted. If at all possible, PRs should come
with tests that confirm the new behavior.
- v0.1.0
- Initial release.
This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 3. See LICENSE for details.
Copyright (c) 2025 Michael Greenberg.