I don't mind the monkeysphere-ssh-proxycommand output on regular connections.

For me it looks something like this with a server not participating in the
monkey sphere:

		ms: processing host: chavez.mayfirst.org
		ms:   - key not found.
	
And like this for a server participating:

		ms: processing host: george.riseup.net
		ms:  primary key found: 7353A74E3B757F8C
		ms:   * acceptable key found.
		ms: known_hosts file updated.

However, I have some batch scripts that run ssh that also provide
output, so the monkeysphere output clutters things up.

I would really like to either have a -q/--quiet option, or, preferable for me
at least, would be for silent output to be the default and have a -v/--verbose
option to get the output. Or - maybe these should be environmental variables?
In any event - someway to suppress informational output would be a useful
improvement.

------

I'd be fine with silent mode as a default, with a more verbose mode
accessible to the user who desires it.

I'd prefer an environment variable (e.g. `MONKEYSPHERE_VERBOSE` or
`MONKEYSPHERE_DEBUG`) over a command-line (e.g. `--verbose`) option,
personally.  It's more in keeping with the model we've used in general
so far.

--dkg

------

I just completed this feature. I published it to a separate branch
(called quiet-mode). I haven't committed it to my master branch for a
couple reasons:

 * I made some significant changes and wanted to ask Big Jimmy to take
 a look since it's mostly his stuff I mucked about with.

 * Sometime between starting my hacking and mid-way through, my
 ~.ssh/known_hosts file got truncted to nothing. I recovered from a
 backup. I couldn't figure out what caused that to happen and couldn't
 replicate it. I was debugging my bash and what I was debugging
 involved bash redirection, so it's reasonable to think that something
 I did caused the problem. However, before committing we incorporate
 this, I would appreciate another set of eyes on my code to make sure
 I'm not doing something dangerous or just dumb :).

Here's an overview of what I did: 

There were two function defined in common that handle sending messages
to the user: log and loge. They both echo the argument passed to
standard error. The first one also echo's "ms: " (as a preface to the
message).  loge was only called in two places and I think is left over
cruft (let me know if I'm wrong please!).

I've added drop in replacement functions: notice, info, and
debug. I've replaced all instances of log and loge with info.

If you use notice, your message will always be sent to standard error.
If you use info, it will be sent to standard error if the env variable
`MONKEYSPHERE_OUTPUT_QUIET` is set to off (it is off by default).  If
you use debug, it will be sent to standard error only if
`MONKEYSPHERE_OUTPUT_DEBUG` is set to on (it's off by default).

Lastly, in monkeysphere-ssh-proxycommand, I've set
`MONKEYSPHERE_QUIET_MODE` to on by default.

So the result is: when using monkeysphere-ssh-proxycommand, you will
not get any output unless you set `MONEKYSPHERE_OUTPUT_QUIET` to off
or `MONKEYSPHERE_OUTPUT_DEBUG` to on. All other commands should work
exactly like they did in the past.

And... we can go through the code and change calls to the info
function to either notice (if we want them to be sent regardless of
the `QUIET` variable) or debug (if we want it only sent if `DEBUG` is
set).

I'm open to suggestions, problems, etc :).

-- SJJ

------

Hey, your Royal Highness, push your branch where you did this work to
your public repo so that I can pull it and check out the changes you
made.  I think it's good that I look over these changes, because there
is definitely some stuff (ie. key processing) that requires that
things go to standard error and definitely not to standard out.  I can
see that if that were changed, it's possible that things could go
wrong (ie. cause a `known_hosts` file to get truncated maybe).

I have to say that I'm still not sure I totally see why it's necessary
to implement such nuanced output switches.  All of the stuff you were
worried about when you reported this bug, and all the stuff that
starts with "ms:", goes to stderr.  If you didn't want to see it, can
you not just redirect stderr to /dev/null?

For what it's worth, I'm not sure *I* can ever imagine *not* wanting
to see that stuff, since it effectively reports on whether the host
you're connecting to is acceptable or not.  I feel like I would always
want to see that.  I guess that's neither here nor there, though,
cause if a user thinks it would be a good switch to have, and it's not
too difficult to implement (as this is), then it's worth implementing.

I think before we really start trying to tackle this, though, we
should outline what is the behavior we ultimately want.  What output
do we want to go to stdout, and do we want to be able to turn that off
or on?  What output do we want to go to stderr, and do we want to be
able to turn that off or on?  At the moment, most output is really
just info for the user, which is why I was sending it all to stderr.
Should all output then just go to stderr, with a switch to either turn
it off or on?

I should point out that we're sort of hitting a bit of a bash
limitation here.  Some monkeysphere internal functions pass info on to
other stuff via stdout, but also need to report stuff to the user as
well, which means this stuff can only be passed to the user via
stderr.

In any event, I just want to outline a straightforward policy about
output so we can know how to best handle it.

-- Big Jimmy.