docs: def get_simple_output(self, stderr=STDOUT):
          """Executes a simple external command and get its output
          The command contains no pipes. Error messages are
          redirected to the standard output by default
  
          :param stderr: where to put stderr
          :return: output of command
          """
          args = shlex.split(self.cmd)
          proc = Popen(args, stdout=PIPE, stderr=stderr)
          return proc.communicate()[0].decode("utf8")