The catch-all failure, and how to stop guessing.

Exit code 1

The catch-all, so read stderr

Almost every command uses 1 for generic failure. The exit code tells you nothing; the last lines of stderr usually do.

Find which command in a chain failed

Without pipefail a pipeline reports the status of the last command, so an early failure looks like success.

Make the failure stop the script

Check the exit status directly

Scope: failure mode: The catch-all failure, and how to stop guessing.