Add a Progress Bar to Linux cp and mv Commands with advcpmv Patch

This guide explains how to add a progress‑bar display to the Linux cp and mv commands, which are part of the GNU coreutils package, by using the open‑source advcpmv patch.

First, obtain the coreutils source code, then fetch and apply the advcpmv patch, compile the modified utilities, and replace the original binaries.

# avoid using root when possible
pwd
/home/tinychen

# download coreutils source
wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-8.32.tar.xz
tar -xJf coreutils-8.32.tar.xz
cd coreutils-8.32/

# download advcpmv patch from GitHub
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jarun/advcpmv/master/advcpmv-0.8-8.32.patch
# apply the patch to enable progress bars
patch -p1 -i advcpmv-0.8-8.32.patch

# compile and install the patched utilities
./configure
make
sudo cp src/cp /usr/local/bin/cp
sudo cp src/mv /usr/local/bin/mv

To make the progress bar appear automatically, add aliases to .bashrc (or the appropriate shell startup file):

alias cp='cp -ig'
alias mv='mv -ig'

After reloading the shell configuration, any cp or mv operation will show a progress bar. For example, copying a large directory produces output similar to the following, displaying total bytes copied, percentage completed, current speed, and per‑file progress:

cp -r /samba/Elements02/kvm/* /kvm/

0 files copied so far...                               1.6 GiB / 67.2 GiB
[===>                                             ]  2.4 %
Copying at 178.4 MiB/s (about 0h 6m 45s remaining)
/samba/Elements02/kvm/iso/CentOS-6.10-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso  1.6 GiB / 3.7 GiB
[========================================================================>] 43.4 %