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clone an USB stick using dd + see its process

Terminal - clone an USB stick using dd + see its process
dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sdd conv=notrunc & while killall -USR1 dd; do sleep 5; done
2010-01-12 14:09:40
User: bw
Functions: dd killall sleep
3
Up
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clone an USB stick using dd + see its process

The following command will clone usb stick inside /dev/sdc to /dev/sdd

Double check you got the correct usb sticks (origional-clone)with fdisk -l.

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Alternatives

There are 5 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
pv sourcefile > destfile
2010-03-20 20:55:18
User: edo
Tags: pv
44
Up
Down
Copy a file using pv and watch its progress

pv allows a user to see the progress of data through a pipeline, by giving information such as time elapsed, percentage completed (with progress bar), current throughput rate, total data transferred, and ETA. (man pv)

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
dd if=fromfile of=tofile & DDPID=$! ; sleep 1 ; while kill -USR1 $DDPID ; do sleep 5; done
2010-01-12 15:01:44
User: deltaray
Functions: dd kill sleep
Tags: dd kill while sleep
4
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Copy a file using dd and watch its progress

This is a more accurate way to watch the progress of a dd process. The $DDPID=$! is needed so that you don't get the PID of the sleep. The sleep 1 is needed because in my testing at least, if you run kill -USR1 against dd too quickly, it will kill it off instead of display the status. So you need to wait a second, probably so that it can configure itself to trap the USR1 signal.

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
dc3dd progress=on bs=512 count=2048 if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null
2010-01-12 22:54:27
User: ubahmapk
Tags: dd copy copy progress progress
2
Up
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Copy a file using dc3dd and watch its progress (very nice alternative to dd)

Requires the dc3dd package - available at http://dc3dd.sourceforge.net

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Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

I think you meant to use just one & in the above command. Otherwise it won't run the while killall until the dd is done.

The problem with doing this is that if you do this as root or something on a multiuser system, you are going to end up sending the USR1 signal to any dd that is running. So you can imagine if another user was running dd and suddenly they say the status output from it, they might wonder what the hell is going on. You could use $! to get the PID of the last process you ran.

However, in the interest of improving upon your idea, I found out something interesting about the dd command. Apparently, if you pass the USR1 signal to it too quickly, it just dies.

If you just do something like this:

dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sdd conv=notrunc & while kill -USR1 $! ; do sleep 5 ; done

At least on my system, the dd dies immediately, I guess because it received the USR1 signal before it could set it self up to trap it. So you have to do this in order to delay it enough so that you don't kill the dd:

dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sdd conv=notrunc & DDPID=$! ; sleep 1 ; while kill -USR1 $DDPID ; do sleep 5 ; done

The DDPID=$! is needed otherwise you'd get he PID of the sleep 1 process.

Comment by deltaray 179 weeks and 1 day ago

You are right, thx for the correction

I noticed your observation too btw! About the dd dying.

Comment by bw 179 weeks and 1 day ago

On OSX (Mountain Lion) dd wants `-SIGINFO`, not `-USR1` and also for some reason DDPID was being assigned the process *before* the current one so I had to run the signal loop in a separate terminal window after `ps aux | grep dd`-ing to get the process number. Thx though. I've learned a lot just now!

Comment by harikaram 5 days ago

Your point of view

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