< zed0> can you get cp to give a progress bar like wget?

Damn right you can.

#!/bin/sh cp_p () { strace -q -ewrite cp -- " ${ 1 } " " ${ 2 } " 2 > & 1 \ | awk '{ count += $NF if (count % 10 == 0) { percent = count / total_size * 100 printf "%3d%% [", percent for (i=0;i<=percent;i++) printf "=" printf ">" for (i=percent;i<100;i++) printf " " printf "]\r" } } END { print "" }' total_size = $( stat -c '%s' " ${ 1 } " ) count = 0 }

In action:

% cp_p /mnt/raid/pub/iso/debian/debian-2.2r4potato-i386-netinst.iso /dev/null 76% [===========================================> ]