progress

Show progress of running coreutils commands

$ progress

$ progress -M

$ progress -w

$ progress -c [cp]

$ progress -p [12345]

$ progress -i [1]

$ progress -p $(pidof [dd])

progress [-M] [-w] [-c command] [-p pid] [-i interval]

progress (formerly cv - coreutils viewer) shows the progress of running coreutils commands. It displays file operations progress for cp, mv, dd, tar, gzip, and similar tools that don't have built-in progress indicators.
The tool works by reading /proc filesystem to find file descriptors and position information. It calculates progress by comparing current position to total file size, then displays percentage and throughput.
Supported commands include: cp, mv, dd, tar, cat, rsync, gzip, gunzip, bzip2, xz, lzma, and many others. The -a flag adds custom commands to monitor.
Monitor mode (-M) continuously updates the display like top. Wait mode (-w) blocks until all monitored processes complete - useful in scripts to know when operations finish.
For dd specifically, progress provides the ETA and throughput that dd traditionally lacked (before dd's native status=progress option).

-M, --monitor

Continuous monitoring mode.

Wait for processes to complete.

Monitor only specified command.

Monitor specific PID.

Update interval in seconds.

Add custom command to monitor.

Monitor all open files (experimental).

Quieter output.

Show version.

Show help.

Only works with commands that read/write files via standard syscalls. Network operations may not show correctly. Requires read access to /proc. Some compression tools don't expose progress information. File size must be known for percentage calculation.

progress was created by Xfennec around 2013, originally named "cv" (coreutils viewer). It addressed the long-standing complaint that cp and dd don't show progress. The tool became popular especially for monitoring dd during disk operations. It was renamed to "progress" for clarity.

pv(1), dd(1), rsync(1), watch(1)