First of all, I was using SSH not SCP. And since the "quiet" option only applies to SCP, this suggestion, while appreciated, was not applicable. My code was initially using ssh_opts. I tried applying this as a hash option to $ssh->open2pty() but that did not work. I finally used the suggestion from "salva" to include master_stderr_discard => 1, in the %opts hash on the call to new(). Thanks again.