It is not installed by default in debian, so the following will install the app.


user@slashzero-desktop:~$ sudo aptitude install pv


Once installed, passing the “–help” parameter will list the basic options.


user@slashzero-desktop:~$ pv --help
Usage: pv [OPTION] [FILE]...
Concatenate FILE(s), or standard input, to standard output,
with monitoring.
-p, --progress show progress bar
-t, --timer show elapsed time
-e, --eta show estimated time of arrival (completion)
-r, --rate show data transfer rate counter
-b, --bytes show number of bytes transferred
-f, --force output even if standard error is not a terminal
-n, --numeric output percentages, not visual information
-q, --quiet do not output any transfer information at all
-c, --cursor use cursor positioning escape sequences
-W, --wait display nothing until first byte transferred
-s, --size SIZE set estimated data size to SIZE bytes
-l, --line-mode count lines instead of bytes
-i, --interval SEC update every SEC seconds
-w, --width WIDTH assume terminal is WIDTH characters wide
-H, --height HEIGHT assume terminal is HEIGHT rows high
-N, --name NAME prefix visual information with NAME
-L, --rate-limit RATE limit transfer to RATE bytes per second
-B, --buffer-size BYTES use a buffer size of BYTES
-R, --remote PID update settings of process PID
-h, --help show this help and exit
-V, --version show version information and exit
Please report any bugs to Andrew Wood .


And here is a quick example, this command tar’s up a directory and send the output to gzip, showing a rate of 223MB/s:


user@slashzero-desktop:/home$ tar zcf - user | pv /bin/gzip > /tmp/backup.tar.gz
59.7kB 0:00:00 [ 223MB/s] [===========================================>] 100%


Incredibly useful stuff.