stderr is not a tty – where are you?

If you’re getting

stderr is not a tty - where are you?
stdin: is not a tty

messages everytime you run something over ssh (or scp), the fix is probably to change the “biff y” line, in ~/.bashrc or wherever it is, to

if `tty -s ` && `test -x /usr/bin/biff`; then
  biff y
fi

(might also be “mesg y” instead of “biff y”, for example.) More generally, it’s happening because some command in your ~/.bashrc (or some other file sourced automatically) is expecting the shell to be interactive, when it’s not. The fix is to find out which program is the culprit, and make sure the shell is interactive before calling the command.

This and other great tips about nuisance messages at this page called Eliminating Some Common Nuisance Messages.

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