Suppressing the “Picked up _JAVA_OPTIONS” message

Question

I'm using _JAVA_OPTIONS to set some defaults for Java on RHEL. It works fine but now every time I start java I get the following message

 Picked up _JAVA_OPTIONS: -foo -bar -baz

is it possible to keep the options but suppress the display of this message.

Answer 1

Java is often called with absolute paths like /usr/bin/java, which makes this answer useless in some cases, and requires more to make it work in others.

That solution I found requires writing a wrapper shell script that redirects STDERR through a filter removing the offending line. It has to be placed in the $PATH before the java binary it wraps and be called with plain java, which java or similar (or your tool has to be configured to use it)

It relies on the bash ability to create a subshell with parentheses (command), and redirect java’s STDERR to its STDIN command1 2> >(command2). Finally, the process in the subshell needs to redirect its filtered input to STDOUT again so that java programs can still use STDERR.

#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/java "$@" 2> >(grep -v "^Picked up _JAVA_OPTIONS:" >&2)

Answer 2

Or you can put this in your shell startup / profile files:

_SILENT_JAVA_OPTIONS="$_JAVA_OPTIONS"
unset _JAVA_OPTIONS
alias java='java "$_SILENT_JAVA_OPTIONS"'