PsTools : psping.exe -q doesnt really make it quiet

Author: rmetzger
Subject: psping.exe -q doesnt really make it quiet
Posted: 24 December 2014 at 1:23pm

Irios wrote: Wow, thanks. This is very interesting. I never knew about STDOUT and STDERR. So my next question is, why are the pstools outputting stuff in this manner? Why is the output split up like this? Is there any practical use for it? I can only imagine the number of people struggling with the same type of problem like I had, but never figuring out how to solve it.

Well, actually, this is a useful thing. Splitting the output allows for keeping the dynamic data separate from the static 'stuff' which when sent to a file is simply noise to be Skipped.

Irios wrote: When STDERR is redirected to NUL, I get a lot different (better!) latency times. It seems like when the copyright info and progress percent goes to the screen it affects the measurements (or the calculations) and creates jitter. I tested with PingPlotter and ping (cmd) to compare results from PsPing because I was experiencing a lot of crazy jitter with the output from PsPing.

Do you mean video 'jitter' or are you talking statistical / numeric 'jitter.' If this is video jitter, than I am not sure what to tell you but to check your video driver. Not sure why you would get issues (or improve on the issue) when redirecting STDERR on a Cmd Console.

If it is numeric jitter, maybe PsPing is smart enough to see the redirection and simply skips the code for output to NUL causing an improvement in it's performance. This could be the reason for the video jitter being removed, as well.

See if you get the same results if you redirect 2>CON (the default) and 2>nameyourfile.err.

I am interested in your results.
Ron Metzger