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Watch the progress of 'dd'

Terminal - Watch the progress of 'dd'
dd if=/dev/urandom of=file.img bs=4KB& pid=$!
2009-04-08 05:56:47
User: atoponce
Functions: dd
5
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Watch the progress of 'dd'

Running this code will execute dd in the background, and you'll grab the process ID with '$!' and assign it to the 'pid' variable. Now, you can watch the progress with the following:

while true; do kill -USR1 $pid && sleep 1 && clear; done

The important thing to grasp here isn't the filename or location of your input or output, or even the block size for that matter, but the fact that you can keep an eye on 'dd' as it's running to see where you are at during its execution.

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Know a better way?

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What others think

Alternatively, if you have 'pv' installed:

pv /dev/urandom | dd of=file.img bs=4KB count=1234

This will display a progress bar for fixed-size input, or just a throughput speed for unlimited things like urandom.

Comment by flatcap 43 weeks and 6 days ago

dd if=/dev/urandom |cpipe -vt| dd of=file.img

Comment by oernii 43 weeks and 6 days ago

pv: http://ivarch.com/programs/pv.shtml

cpipe: http://cpipe.berlios.de/

(for the less observant) The trick here is that sending 'dd' the USR1 signal causes it to print the latest transfer statistics.

Comment by bwoodacre 43 weeks and 5 days ago

hey thx for reminding me to create alias of this

#ddp dd_args

function ddp() { dd "$@" & pid=$! && while true; do kill -USR1 $pid && sleep 1 && clear; done ;}
Comment by professoralex 38 weeks and 5 days ago

You could use

watch -n1 "kill -USR1 $pid"

instead of the sleep and clear in a for loop.

Comment by stuart 16 weeks and 4 days ago

Your point of view

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