6 ms·
Can you get cp to give a progress bar like wget?
- panic 17y agoEasier: install Pipe Viewer (http://www.ivarch.com/programs/pv.shtml http://www.ivarch.com/programs/pv.shtml) and, instead of cp a b run pv < a > b
- philjackson 17y agoI like pv and find myself using it when bziping large files (where the blocker is bzip). It must have a negative impact on the speed of a copy. *Hmmm, I can't back up my own predictions: cp huge blah 0.11s user 7.94s system 6% cpu 2:12.54 total pv < huge > something 0.12s user 8.10s system 7% cpu 1:54.86 total
- __david__ 17y agoI love pv. It's great because it's pretty much a drop-in for "cat" that gives you fancy progress bars. But for copy I tend to use "rsync -aP". It has progress but not a bar and just feels more like a replacement for cp to me.
- w1ntermute 17y agoFor those of you interested in making it a permanent replacement for cp, you can use this Python script: #!/usr/bin/env python from sys import argv from subprocess import Popen copy_from = open(argv[-2],'r') copy_to = open(argv[-1],'w') Popen("pv", stdin=copy_from, stdout=copy_to) copy_from.close() copy_to.close() Just alias cp to it in Bash.
- ajross 17y agoUm... in what universe would you want an interactive terminal gadget to become the default implementation of cp? Yikes. Still, nice pointer to the pv tool, which I hadn't heard of. Still still, the linked awk snipped is awfully clever and more fun to read.
- philjackson 17y agoWhat? I think the override is fine in an interactive environment. My team and I use a hack which overrides cd and as well as calling builtin cd it sources a script if it exists from cwd. This means you can get the exact enviroment you need for that working copy of a project.
- rntz 17y agoAlternatively, you could just write a shell function: cp() { pv < $1 > $2; } (Or name the function something else if you want regular cp still available.)
- olliesaunders 17y agoQuote the variables.
- rntz 17y agoAh, good point. I'm personally used to zsh, which doesn't have that particular misfeature.
- petercooper 17y agoMac users will be happy to learn that: sudo port install pv "just works" :-) (Well, assuming you use MacPorts anyway.)
- shykes 17y agoOr you could just do: cp $SOURCE /dev/stdout | pv | cp /dev/stdin $DEST Edit: "pv <a >b" is simpler, but isn't the game to fit "cp" somewhere? :)
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y agoThat doesn't give you a progress bar because it doesn't know how big the data stream will be. You need to pass in some options to pv to give it that information.
- freshprince 17y agoAnd now enjoy copying files at only half the usual speed.
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y agosize=`wc -c a` ; cp a b & sleep 1 ; ETA 'wc -c b' $size Every 10 seconds it runs the given command, then gives an ETA to the number you want. It's not a progress bar, but it is a projected time of completion and can easily be extended if you want. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1149364 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1149364 ETA is like pv but for those occasions when you don't have access to the data stream in a pipe. It can be used anytime you can compute a number that indicates how far along you are. Just give it the command to run for itself, or run the command and feed the values to ETA on stdin and it will give you regular estimates of when it will hit the given target. It also lets your cp run at full speed, unlike when you copy through pv, and is more generic than just checking on the progress of specifically a copy command. It lets you predict the completion time of anything measurable.
- gommm 17y agoThanks! that looks useful... I completely missed your submission the first time you posted it
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y agoYou are not alone: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1151791 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1151791
- yellowbkpk 17y agoI use rsync --progress as a cp replacement when I feel like I need to know how the cp is going.
- lamby 17y agoIf you feel the need to point out an alternative solution, then I think you have missed the entire point by a wide margin.
- metabrew 17y agoNice hack. Hacks involving strace and awk are fun, the only thing that could have improved this is to somehow involve netcat too.
- Estragon 17y ago...somehow involve netcat too. I was thinking of slowing the copy operation down a bit more by roundtripping it through Australia...
- jimbokun 17y agoI think the people pointing out an alternative solution are just trying to join in the fun.
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y agoThis item has prompted me to investigate the strace command. It's one to put in the bag of things to try on occasion to make sure I don't forget it. In the BUGS section of the man page you can find these items (amongst others): A traced process ignores SIGSTOP except on SVR4 platforms. Hmm. That's useful to note. A traced process which tries to block SIGTRAP will be sent a SIGSTOP in an attempt to force continuation of tracing. I can understand that, although it could be surprising in practice for the unwary. A traced process runs slowly. Understandable. Traced processes which are descended from command may be left running after an interrupt signal (CTRL-C). That's definitely worth knowing. On Linux, exciting as it would be, tracing the init process is forbidden. Damn.
- jrockway 17y agoOn Linux, exciting as it would be, tracing the init process is forbidden. But of course, nothing is stopping you from commenting this check out.
- tzury 17y agocan also with $ rsync --progress file1 file2
- volomike 17y agoI like your way best.
- gwern 17y agoSome distributions of 'cp' have it built in: https://bugs.launchpad.net/fedora/+source/coreutils/+bug/64067 https://bugs.launchpad.net/fedora/+source/coreutils/+bug/640...
- sabat 17y agorsync -Pv from-file to-file