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.