How can I make a progress bar while copying a directory with cp?

Question

I suppose I could compare the number of files in the source directory to the number of files in the target directory as cp progresses, or perhaps do it with folder size instead? I tried to find examples, but all bash progress bars seem to be written for copying single files. I want to copy a bunch of files (or a directory, if the former is not possible).

Answer 1

You can also use rsync instead of cp like this:

rsync -Pa source destination

Which will give you a progress bar and estimated time of completion. Very handy.

Answer 2

To show a progress bar while doing a recursive copy of files & folders & subfolders (including links and file attributes), you can use gcp (easily installed in Ubuntu and Debian by running "sudo apt-get install gcp"):

gcp -rf SRC DEST

Here is the typical output while copying a large folder of files:

Copying 1.33 GiB  73% |#####################      | 230.19 M/s ETA:  00:00:07

Notice that it shows just one progress bar for the whole operation, whereas if you want a single progress bar per file, you can use rsync:

rsync -ah --progress SRC DEST

Answer 3

You may have a look at the tool vcp. Thats a simple copy tool with two progress bars: One for the current file, and one for overall.

EDIT

Here is the link to the sources: http://members.iinet.net.au/~lynx/vcp/ Manpage can be found here: http://linux.die.net/man/1/vcp

Most distributions have a package for it.

Answer 4

Here another solution: Use the tool bar

You could invoke it like this:

#!/bin/bash
filesize=$(du -sb ${1} | awk '{ print $1 }')
tar -cf - -C ${1} ./ | bar --size ${filesize} | tar -xf - -C ${2}

You have to go the way over tar, and it will be inaccurate on small files. Also you must take care that the target directory exists. But it is a way.

Answer 5

My preferred option is Advanced Copy, as it uses the original cp source files.

$ wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-8.21.tar.xz
$ tar xvJf coreutils-8.21.tar.xz
$ cd coreutils-8.21/
$ wget --no-check-certificate wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jarun/advcpmv/master/advcpmv-0.8-8.32.patch
$ patch -p1 -i advcpmv-0.8-8.32.patch
$ ./configure
$ make

The new programs are now located in src/cp and src/mv. You may choose to replace your existing commands:

$ sudo cp src/cp /usr/local/bin/cp
$ sudo cp src/mv /usr/local/bin/mv

Then you can use cp as usual, or specify -g to show the progress bar:

$ cp -g src dest

Answer 6

A simple unix way is to go to the destination directory and do watch -n 5 du -s . Perhaps make it more pretty by showing as a bar . This can help in environments where you have just the standard unix utils and no scope of installing additional files . du-sh is the key , watch is to just do every 5 seconds. Pros : Works on any unix system Cons : No Progress Bar

Answer 7

To add another option, you can use cpv. It uses pv to imitate the usage of cp.

It works like pv but you can use it to recursively copy directories

You can get it here

Answer 8

How about something like

find . -type f | pv -s $(find . -type f | wc -c) | xargs -i cp {} --parents /DEST/$(dirname {})

It finds all the files in the current directory, pipes that through PV while giving PV an estimated size so the progress meter works and then piping that to a CP command with the --parents flag so the DEST path matches the SRC path.

One problem I have yet to overcome is that if you issue this command

find /home/user/test -type f | pv -s $(find . -type f | wc -c) | xargs -i cp {} --parents /www/test/$(dirname {})

the destination path becomes /www/test/home/user/test/....FILES... and I am unsure how to tell the command to get rid of the '/home/user/test' part. That why I have to run it from inside the SRC directory.

Answer 9

Check the source code for progress_bar in the below git repository of mine

https://github.com/Kiran-Bose/supreme

Also try custom bash script package supreme to verify how progress bar work with cp and mv comands

Functionality overview

(1)Open Apps ----Firefox ----Calculator ----Settings

(2)Manage Files ----Search ----Navigate ----Quick access

            |----Select File(s)
            |----Inverse Selection
            |----Make directory
            |----Make file
                                          |----Open
                                          |----Copy
                                          |----Move
                                          |----Delete
                                          |----Rename
                                          |----Send to Device
                                          |----Properties

(3)Manage Phone ----Move/Copy from phone ----Move/Copy to phone ----Sync folders

(4)Manage USB ----Move/Copy from USB ----Move/Copy to USB

Answer 10

There is command progress, https://github.com/Xfennec/progress, coreutils progress viewer.

Just run progress in another terminal to see the copy/move progress. For continuous monitoring use -M flag.

Answer 11

There's a tool pv to do this exact thing: http://www.ivarch.com/programs/pv.shtml

There's a ubuntu version in apt