Hi, I used scp in some background process for transferring large files which took some hours. For this I needed a less fancy output, preferable parseble by a script , so I could regularly see how far the transfer was The adaptions I made to progressmeter.c and .h are underneath my mail as a patch Some sample output how it looks now: :~/src/openssh-5.3p1$ ./scp -l 60000 test.bin hans@localhost:. progress test.bin : 0% 0 0.0KB/s --:-- ETA progress test.bin : 7% 7488KB 7.3MB/s 00:12 ETA progress test.bin : 15% 14MB 7.3MB/s 00:11 ETA .. progress test.bin : 98% 94MB 7.3MB/s 00:00 ETA progress test.bin : 100% 95MB 7.3MB/s 00:13 done With a simple script you can now easily control the output and save the progress somewhere: #!/bin/bash # --- only update status every 10 seconds statfn=scp1.status refresh=10 no=0 ./scp -l 60000 test.bin hans@localhost:. 2>&1|while read id fn sep perc size speed estim eta do ((state=no % refresh)) [[ "$eta" = "done" || $state -eq 0 ]] && echo "`date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"` $fn $perc $size $speed $estim $eta" >$statfn ((no=no+1)) done The patch only adds this functionality as an option, default the original layout is used. Only when variable progresstype is set to nonzero this alternate output is selected. For selecting the alternate output it would only require some commandline option in scp.c and do the isatty check only when progresstype==0 Let me know your comments... Hans --- progressmeter.h 2006-03-26 05:30:02.000000000 +0200 +++ progressmeter_new.h 2009-10-24 20:35:35.168288539 +0200 @@ -23,5 +23,7 @@ * THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. */ +extern int progresstype; + void start_progress_meter(char *, off_t, off_t *); void stop_progress_meter(void); --- progressmeter.c 2006-08-05 04:39:40.000000000 +0200 +++ progressmeter_new.c 2009-10-24 20:32:45.455788330 +0200 @@ -74,12 +74,15 @@ static int win_size; /* terminal window size */ static volatile sig_atomic_t win_resized; /* for window resizing */ +int progresstype = 0; /* use default tty progress reporting */ + /* units for format_size */ static const char unit[] = " KMGT"; static int can_output(void) { + if (progresstype) return 1; return (getpgrp() == tcgetpgrp(STDOUT_FILENO)); } @@ -158,9 +161,9 @@ /* filename */ buf[0] = '\0'; - file_len = win_size - 35; + file_len = (progresstype)?(strlen(file)+11):(win_size - 35); if (file_len > 0) { - len = snprintf(buf, file_len + 1, "\r%s", file); + len = snprintf(buf, file_len + 1, (progresstype)?"progress %s :":"\r%s", file); if (len < 0) len = 0; if (len >= file_len + 1) @@ -195,7 +198,7 @@ stalled = 0; if (stalled >= STALL_TIME) - strlcat(buf, "- stalled -", win_size); + strlcat(buf, (progresstype)?"-stalled-":"- stalled -", win_size); else if (bytes_per_second == 0 && bytes_left) strlcat(buf, " --:-- ETA", win_size); else { @@ -219,10 +222,14 @@ if (bytes_left > 0) strlcat(buf, " ETA", win_size); else - strlcat(buf, " ", win_size); + strlcat(buf, (progresstype)?" done":" ", win_size); } - atomicio(vwrite, STDOUT_FILENO, buf, win_size - 1); + if (progresstype) { + strlcat(buf,"\n",win_size); + atomicio(vwrite, STDOUT_FILENO, buf, strlen(buf)); + } else + atomicio(vwrite, STDOUT_FILENO, buf, win_size - 1); last_update = now; } @@ -234,7 +241,7 @@ save_errno = errno; - if (win_resized) { + if (progresstype==0 && win_resized) { setscreensize(); win_resized = 0; } @@ -257,12 +264,16 @@ stalled = 0; bytes_per_second = 0; - setscreensize(); + if (progresstype) + win_size=MAX_WINSIZE; + else { + setscreensize(); + signal(SIGWINCH, sig_winch); + } if (can_output()) refresh_progress_meter(); signal(SIGALRM, update_progress_meter); - signal(SIGWINCH, sig_winch); alarm(UPDATE_INTERVAL); } @@ -278,7 +289,8 @@ if (cur_pos != end_pos) refresh_progress_meter(); - atomicio(vwrite, STDOUT_FILENO, "\n", 1); + if (progresstype==0) + atomicio(vwrite, STDOUT_FILENO, "\n", 1); } /*ARGSUSED*/