How to add a progress bar to a shell script?

Question

When scripting in bash or any other shell in *NIX, while running a command that will take more than a few seconds, a progress bar is needed.

For example, copying a big file, opening a big tar file.

What ways do you recommend to add progress bars to shell scripts?

Answer 1

I prefer to use dialog with the --gauge param. Is used very often in .deb package installations and other basic configuration stuff of many distros. So you don't need to reinvent the wheel... again

Just put an int value from 1 to 100 @stdin. One basic and silly example:

for a in {1..100}; do sleep .1s; echo $a| dialog --gauge "waiting" 7 30; done

I have this /bin/Wait file (with chmod u+x perms) for cooking purposes :P

#!/bin/bash
INIT=`/bin/date +%s`
NOW=$INIT
FUTURE=`/bin/date -d "$1" +%s`
[ $FUTURE -a $FUTURE -eq $FUTURE ] || exit
DIFF=`echo "$FUTURE - $INIT"|bc -l`

while [ $INIT -le $FUTURE -a $NOW -lt $FUTURE ]; do
    NOW=`/bin/date +%s`
    STEP=`echo "$NOW - $INIT"|bc -l`
    SLEFT=`echo "$FUTURE - $NOW"|bc -l`
    MLEFT=`echo "scale=2;$SLEFT/60"|bc -l`
    TEXT="$SLEFT seconds left ($MLEFT minutes)";
    TITLE="Waiting $1: $2"
    sleep 1s
    PTG=`echo "scale=0;$STEP * 100 / $DIFF"|bc -l`
    echo $PTG| dialog --title "$TITLE" --gauge "$TEXT" 7 72
done

if [ "$2" == "" ]; then msg="Espera terminada: $1";audio="Listo";
else msg=$2;audio=$2;fi 

/usr/bin/notify-send --icon=stock_appointment-reminder-excl "$msg"
espeak -v spanish "$audio"

So I can put:

Wait "34 min" "warm up the oven"

or

Wait "dec 31" "happy new year"

Answer 2

Based on the work of Edouard Lopez, I created a progress bar that fits the size of the screen, whatever it is. Check it out.

It's also posted on Git Hub.

#!/bin/bash
#
# Progress bar by Adriano Pinaffo
# Available at https://github.com/adriano-pinaffo/progressbar.sh
# Inspired on work by Edouard Lopez (https://github.com/edouard-lopez/progress-bar.sh)
# Version 1.0
# Date April, 28th 2017

function error {
  echo "Usage: $0 [SECONDS]"
  case $1 in
    1) echo "Pass one argument only"
    exit 1
    ;;
    2) echo "Parameter must be a number"
    exit 2
    ;;
    *) echo "Unknown error"
    exit 999
  esac
}

[[ $# -ne 1 ]] && error 1
[[ $1 =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]] || error 2

duration=${1}
barsize=$((`tput cols` - 7))
unity=$(($barsize / $duration))
increment=$(($barsize%$duration))
skip=$(($duration/($duration-$increment)))
curr_bar=0
prev_bar=
for (( elapsed=1; elapsed<=$duration; elapsed++ ))
do
  # Elapsed
prev_bar=$curr_bar
  let curr_bar+=$unity
  [[ $increment -eq 0 ]] || {  
    [[ $skip -eq 1 ]] &&
      { [[ $(($elapsed%($duration/$increment))) -eq 0 ]] && let curr_bar++; } ||
    { [[ $(($elapsed%$skip)) -ne 0 ]] && let curr_bar++; }
  }
  [[ $elapsed -eq 1 && $increment -eq 1 && $skip -ne 1 ]] && let curr_bar++
  [[ $(($barsize-$curr_bar)) -eq 1 ]] && let curr_bar++
  [[ $curr_bar -lt $barsize ]] || curr_bar=$barsize
  for (( filled=0; filled<=$curr_bar; filled++ )); do
    printf "▇"
  done

  # Remaining
  for (( remain=$curr_bar; remain<$barsize; remain++ )); do
    printf " "
  done

  # Percentage
  printf "| %s%%" $(( ($elapsed*100)/$duration))

  # Return
  sleep 1
  printf "\r"
done
printf "\n"
exit 0

Enjoy

Answer 3

I have built on the answer provided by fearside

This connects to an Oracle database to retrieve the progress of an RMAN restore.

#!/bin/bash

 # 1. Create ProgressBar function
 # 1.1 Input is currentState($1) and totalState($2)
 function ProgressBar {
 # Process data
let _progress=(${1}*100/${2}*100)/100
let _done=(${_progress}*4)/10
let _left=40-$_done
# Build progressbar string lengths
_fill=$(printf "%${_done}s")
_empty=$(printf "%${_left}s")

# 1.2 Build progressbar strings and print the ProgressBar line
# 1.2.1 Output example:
# 1.2.1.1 Progress : [########################################] 100%
printf "\rProgress : [${_fill// /#}${_empty// /-}] ${_progress}%%"

}

function rman_check {
sqlplus -s / as sysdba <<EOF
set heading off
set feedback off
select
round((sofar/totalwork) * 100,0) pct_done
from
v\$session_longops
where
totalwork > sofar
AND
opname NOT LIKE '%aggregate%'
AND
opname like 'RMAN%';
exit
EOF
}

# Variables
_start=1

# This accounts as the "totalState" variable for the ProgressBar function
_end=100

_rman_progress=$(rman_check)
#echo ${_rman_progress}

# Proof of concept
#for number in $(seq ${_start} ${_end})

while [ ${_rman_progress} -lt 100 ]
do

for number in _rman_progress
do
sleep 10
ProgressBar ${number} ${_end}
done

_rman_progress=$(rman_check)

done
printf '\nFinished!\n'

Answer 4

Got an easy progress bar function that i wrote the other day:

#!/bin/bash
# 1. Create ProgressBar function
# 1.1 Input is currentState($1) and totalState($2)
function ProgressBar {
# Process data
    let _progress=(${1}*100/${2}*100)/100
    let _done=(${_progress}*4)/10
    let _left=40-$_done
# Build progressbar string lengths
    _fill=$(printf "%${_done}s")
    _empty=$(printf "%${_left}s")

# 1.2 Build progressbar strings and print the ProgressBar line
# 1.2.1 Output example:                           
# 1.2.1.1 Progress : [########################################] 100%
printf "\rProgress : [${_fill// /\#}${_empty// /-}] ${_progress}%%"

}

# Variables
_start=1

# This accounts as the "totalState" variable for the ProgressBar function
_end=100

# Proof of concept
for number in $(seq ${_start} ${_end})
do
    sleep 0.1
    ProgressBar ${number} ${_end}
done
printf '\nFinished!\n'

Or snag it from,
https://github.com/fearside/ProgressBar/

Answer 5

I was looking for something more sexy than the selected answer, so did my own script.

Preview

Source

I put it on github progress-bar.sh

progress-bar() {
  local duration=${1}


    already_done() { for ((done=0; done<$elapsed; done++)); do printf "▇"; done }
    remaining() { for ((remain=$elapsed; remain<$duration; remain++)); do printf " "; done }
    percentage() { printf "| %s%%" $(( (($elapsed)*100)/($duration)*100/100 )); }
    clean_line() { printf "\r"; }

  for (( elapsed=1; elapsed<=$duration; elapsed++ )); do
      already_done; remaining; percentage
      sleep 1
      clean_line
  done
  clean_line
}

Usage

 progress-bar 100

Answer 6

My solution displays the percentage of the tarball that is currently being uncompressed and written. I use this when writing out 2GB root filesystem images. You really need a progress bar for these things. What I do is use gzip --list to get the total uncompressed size of the tarball. From that I calculate the blocking-factor needed to divide the file into 100 parts. Finally, I print a checkpoint message for each block. For a 2GB file this gives about 10MB a block. If that is too big then you can divide the BLOCKING_FACTOR by 10 or 100, but then it's harder to print pretty output in terms of a percentage.

Assuming you are using Bash then you can use the following shell function

untar_progress () 
{ 
  TARBALL=$1
  BLOCKING_FACTOR=$(gzip --list ${TARBALL} |
    perl -MPOSIX -ane '$.==2 && print ceil $F[1]/50688')
  tar --blocking-factor=${BLOCKING_FACTOR} --checkpoint=1 \
    --checkpoint-action='ttyout=Wrote %u%  \r' -zxf ${TARBALL}
}