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dd progress indicator on OSX

Published: 2018-07-07. Last Updated: 2018-07-08 00:06:46 UTC
by Didier Stevens (Version: 1)

Unfortunately, dd on OSX has no status option:

But it reacts to signals too, like dd on Linux. It's another signal however: siginfo.

And signal siginfo is coupled to key-combination CTRL-T. No need to use kill, you can just type CTRL-T in the terminal window where dd is running:

Didier Stevens
Senior handler
Microsoft MVP
blog.DidierStevens.com DidierStevensLabs.com

Keywords: dd

2 comment(s)

Comments

> Unfortunately, dd on OSX has no status option

Fortunately, dd on OSX has no *linux*-equivalent dd option, because it came from FreeBSD, where it's had the SIGUSR1/SIGINT option since August 7, 1991 ;)

https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=dd&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+1.0-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html

Was linux in public existence then?

It appears not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux
On 25 August 1991, he (at age 21) announced this system in a Usenet posting to the newsgroup "comp.os.minix."

Why did they re-invent the wheel in the first place is a better question ;)

OSX uses the BSD version of dd, the status extension has been added in FreeBSD and OpenBSD but well after OSX forked. NetBSD still doesn't have it https://www.unix.com/man-page/netbsd/1/dd/

You (like many people) are probably used to the GNU variant.

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