Progressbar code you gave gives me an error about no PID

Question

I am a beginner at Linux and a big time beginner at bash scripting. I am trying to write a bash script that will backup my home directory AND show me the progress. I found a script called bar that allows me to show a progress bar when deflating a tar.bz2 file, but not when creating one. I found your code and am trying it, but it gives me an error: lsof: no process ID specified lsof 4.81

I go your code from this page: How to add a progress bar to a shell script? Here is the code:

#! /bin/bash
tar -jcf userhomeBU$(date +%Y&m&d)".tar.bz2" /home/user
lsof -o0 -o -p $PID |
awk '
            BEGIN { CONVFMT = "%.2f" }
            $4 ~ /^[0-9]+r$/ && $7 ~ /^0t/ {
                    offset = substr($7, 3)
                    fname = $9
                    "stat -f %z '\''" fname "'\''" | getline
                    len = $0
                    print fname, offset / len * 100 "%"
            }
    '

My home directory is backed up just fine, but I get no progress bar due to the error.

It looks like this will use the PID to watch to see when it is done. I am thinking it uses the PID and not the name of the file because the name will be unknown at the very start of the script. Can you please explain what this script is doing exactly, and why I am not getting a PID for it to watch. I have put my backup code in front and at the end but it does not show a bar, and I get the same error just at a different time.

Help!

Brian Clements · Answer 1 · 2010-11-22T01:12:00.307

0

Here is an adaptation of one of the other answers from your original post. I tested it and it works on my machine:

tar -Ocf - /home/user | pv -i 1 -w 50 -berps `du -bs /home/user | awk '{print $1}'` | bzip2 - >  userhomeBU$(date +%Y%m%d)".tar.bz2"

edited Nov 22 '10 at 01:12

answered Nov 21 '10 at 15:21

Brian Clements

3,787
1
25
26

This did not show me any progress. Not sure what I did wrong. – Newbie Nov 21 '10 at 17:09
Changed answer to use a different approach. – Brian Clements Nov 22 '10 at 01:07
Also, I had to use `%m%d` instead of `&m&d` for the date command to work. – Brian Clements Nov 22 '10 at 01:12
I had ' and should have had `. It just says [2] stopped "the big long cmd" Any thoughts? – Newbie Nov 22 '10 at 04:38
each time I run this the number in [] goes up by one but still says stopped. – Newbie Nov 22 '10 at 15:09
do you have an `&` somewhere? Because it sounds like you are running it in the background (which you shouldn't for the command in my answer). How big is `/home/user`? If it is small, you won't see much. – Brian Clements Nov 23 '10 at 02:39

Wesley Rice · Answer 2 · 2010-11-21T16:12:32.667

0

Try assigning the entire tar command to a variable, passing the variable to pidof:

...
TAR_CMD='tar -jcf userhomeBU$(date +%Y&m&d)".tar.bz2" /home/user'  
lsof -o0 -o -p `pidof -s $TAR_CMD` | \   
awk ...

edited Nov 21 '10 at 16:12

answered Nov 21 '10 at 15:29

Wesley Rice

2,711
19
8

This assumes that there is only one `tar` process. If there are any others, `pidof` will return with two pids. – Brian Clements Nov 21 '10 at 15:34
If I assign the tar cmd to a var, how do I call the cmd with the var to actually make it run the cmd? – Newbie Nov 21 '10 at 17:13

newbie · Answer 3 · 2010-11-23T03:17:21.733

It is not a very big home dir, but I have a few big files in it. It takes about 45 seconds to backup due to a few iso's and it is in a VM. Also, I know it is not working because there is no backup file created. There is no & in the script. When I run it I get the following output:

[1] stopped       tar -Ocf - /home/user | pv -i 1 -w 50 -berps 'du -bs /home/user | awk '{print $1}'' | bzip2 - > userBU(date +%Y%m%d)".tar.bz2"

which is just a copy of my code. The number in the [ ] goes up by one with each run. The first ' and last ' in the code are really the single ' under the tilda, but the ` was not showing up in this post.

Progressbar code you gave gives me an error about no PID

3 Answers3