You need to combine the output of STDERR and STDOUT prior to piping it to logger. Try this instead:
/home/dirname/application_name -v 2>&1 | logger &
Example
$ echo "hi" 2>&1 | logger &
[1] 26818
[1]+ Done echo "hi" 2>&1 | logger
$ sudo tail /var/log/messages
Apr 12 17:53:57 greeneggs saml: hi
You can use the abbreviated notation here as well, if used cautiously in a actual Bash shell (not to be confused with Dash):
$ echo "hi" |& logger &
NOTE: This is equivalent to <cmd1> 2>&1 | <cmd2>. Again only use the above when making use of an actual Bash shell interactively, would be a good way to approach it.
excerpt from ABSG
# |& was added to Bash 4 as an abbreviation for 2>&1 |.
References
In ksh, bash and zsh, time is a keyword, not a builtin. Redirections on the same line apply only to the command being timed, not to the output of time itself.
$ time ls -d / /nofile >/dev/null 2>/dev/null
real 0m0.003s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.000s
To redirect the output from time itself in these shells, you need to use an additional level of grouping.
{ time mycommand 2>&3; } 3>&2 2>mycommand.time
If you use the GNU version of the standalone time utility, it has a -o option to write the output of time elsewhere than stderr. You can make time write to the terminal:
/usr/bin/time -o /dev/tty mycommand >/dev/null 2>/dev/null
If you want to keep the output from time on its standard error, you need an extra level of file descriptor shuffling.
/usr/bin/time -o /dev/fd/3 mycommand 3>&2 >/dev/null 2>/dev/null
With any time utility, you can invoke an intermediate shell to perform the desired redirections. Invoking an intermediate shell to perform extra actions such as cd, redirections, etc. is pretty common — it's the kind of little things that shells are designed to do.
/usr/bin/time sh -c 'exec mycommand >/dev/null 2>/dev/null'
Best Answer
teeexists for this purpose; it takes a filename argument and writes the data it reads from stdin to both stdout and the file: