Checking if a transfer completed?

[djdwosk97]

I started an internal transfer between two drives, and it should have finished (and according to disk reporting, it looks like it did), but the shell never prompted me with a new line (which usually happens when the process completes). Is there any way to check that the transfer has completed in full?

Would it make sense (in the future) to run md5 on a directory before moving it and then again after it's been moved to verify that the transfer has completed and as completed perfectly? (or I guess, probably do a copy and then delete instead of a move).

 

[tvsjr]

You could open another connection and check to see if the process is still running with a "ps x | grep <processname>".

I'd personally use rsync, as it will do the checksumming for you, give you better status through the process, and allow you to restart in the middle if something dies.

 

[DrKK]

Here's one possibility. If the destination dataset has a big compression on it, like gzip-9, what I've noticed in the past is that the transfer can "complete" but not actually "complete" in the proper sense of the word because the kernel is busy gzip'ing stuff for awhile. I imagine the CLI prompt won't return until all that kind of business is completed.

But this is just spitballing.