cp time remaining?

[Boomslang]

Asking this question out of curiosity, mostly - is there a way to show an estimate of the remaining time left on a simple cp operation? It doesn't seem like there's a functionality for that built into cp itself, but what about a separate program?

 

[Carlosinfl]

Good question...it would be nice to know if there is a tag or something that will show how long a cp or mv command time is remaining.

 

[c.d.e]

Setup a ftp server on localhost, ftp to it and move stuff that way?

 

[Whatsisname]

du -sh source/

start copying and put it into the background

occasionally du -sh destination/

Not exactly' time remaining' but useful information enough.

 

[SpaceHonkey]

Well you inspired me to look for something, and found it!

rsync --progress

Wasn't aware you could use it to copy files locally, but it works like a charm. Time estimates are per file though, but it does show what file is being copied.

Let's call it 50% of what you want...well maybe 20%.

 

[oliver]

You can use vcp (curses based)

THe gentoo devs submitted a patch which enabled a progress bar but it was rejected upstream. You can get the patch and apply if you *really* want it

 

[tamasrepus]

I don't know of any command-line tools that tell you time remaining for an entire operation... I guess in these tools' defense, time remaining can be difficult to determine anyway, so none of the tools bother to tell you the "Microsoft minutes" remaining.

rsync with the -Pv options will tell you the time remaining on the specific file it is transferring, which is better than nothing. I usually use rsync over cp most of the time.