On Debian (and most Unix-like systems), you can overwrite stdout with stderr by redirecting stderr to stdout. Here are the common ways to do it:

1. Redirect stderr to stdout

Use 2>&1 to redirect stderr (file descriptor 2) to stdout (file descriptor 1):

command 2>&1

• This sends both stdout and stderr to the terminal.

2. Overwrite stdout with stderr only

If you want to discard stdout and only show stderr, use:

command 2>&1 >/dev/null

• 2>&1 redirects stderr to stdout.
• >/dev/null discards stdout (and thus stderr, since it was redirected to stdout).

3. Swap stdout and stderr

If you want to swap stdout and stderr (so stderr goes to stdout and stdout goes to stderr), use:

command 3>&2 2>&1 1>&3 | command2

• This is more advanced and rarely needed.

4. Save stderr to a file and overwrite stdout

If you want to save stderr to a file and overwrite stdout with it:

command 2> error.log
cat error.log >&1