[LAD] [OT] bash vs disk activity

[Patrick Shirkey]

On Tue, 2007-10-09 at 07:30 -0400, Ross Vandegrift wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 09, 2007 at 05:50:12PM +0700, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
> > For example if I transfer 200mb to a usb disk the copy command takes
> > about 30 seconds before it returns and the data takes about 5 minutes
> > before it is actually finished being transferred and the device is
> > unmountable. 
> > 
> > How would I track the 5 minutes of data transfer with bash?
> 
> There's not a super-easy way since that data is being written in the
> background out of the buffer-cache.  You could use iostat and vmstat
> for this purpose, but it kinda seems like overkill to me.
> 
> "iostat -x" gives you detailed I/O statistics on each partition
> "vmstat" gives you information on various VM data, including buffers
> 
> My idea would just be to umount the disk and wait until that returns.

Hi,

That is what I currently do but it is confusing for other people and I
would like to make my bash a little less hackish.

For example I would like to print a nice little progress bar similar to
how yum monitors an update/download.



Cheers.


-- 
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd.