ongoing progress

[jw schultz]

On Thu, Sep 25, 2003 at 11:14:28AM -0400, Jim Salter wrote:
[With complete disregard for the width of my screen]
> A couple of ideas about things that would be nice to see
> in rsync:
> 
> 1. a "0.5v" option - something that would just show a
> progress either by file or by megabyte, ie "processing
> file 1,048 of 9,032" or "processing: 832 of 3,459 MB".
> The standard "verbose" is good for troubleshooting, but
> it's not very useful for gauging how much has been done
> and how much is left when you're just waiting impatiently
> for a job to complete.

Hmm.  Nice idea.  Sort of --progress but without -v.  I can
imagine both pairs if we totalled file sizes (of all files).
Even a percentage could be done.  The numbers would be of
totals for the file list, not of actual transfer quantity
because that can't be known in advance.  Skipped files would
be added to progress just like transfered files.

Would have to be done by generator so a pull might be easy
but i'm not sure how we'd do it for a push.

> 2. I don't even know if this is feasible, but it would be
> GREAT - some way to query a running rsync process to get a
> single line output similar to that described above, for
> use e.g. in building web interfaces to automated backups,
> so that a CGI-driven interface could auto-refresh itself
> every few seconds by querying the running rsync for its
> status.

I don't think it is very feasible.  It's possible it could
be done in a signal handler but that would require the
master progress values being calculated first.  The better
approach would be to use the #1 and have the backup process
provide the info from that rather than depend on an rsync hook.

> If I had any C++ skills, I'd be trying to do the above
> myself.

You're in luck; no C++ skills needed.  Rsync is in C.

-- 
________________________________________________________________
	J.W. Schultz            Pegasystems Technologies
	email address:		jw at pegasys.ws

		Remember Cernan and Schmitt