Get a progress indicator when importing MySQL databases

There is nice tool called pv

# On Ubuntu/Debian system
$ sudo apt-get install pv

# On Redhat/CentOS
$ sudo yum install pv

then e.g. you can use it like this

$ zcat dbpackfile.sql.gz | pv -cN zcat | mysql -uuser -ppass dbname

Please check UPDATE 2 for my latest version

ps: check this blog http://blog.larsstrand.org/2011/12/tip-pipe-viewer.html

UPDATE: seems like above link is broken but I found same article here http://blog.larsstrand.no/2011/12/tip-pipe-viewer.html

UPDATE 2: Even better solution with FULL progress bar. To do it you need to use 2 build in pv options. One is --progress to indicate progress bar and second is --size to tell pv how large the overall file is.

pv --progress --size UNPACKED-FILE-SIZE-IN-BYTES

..the problem is with .gz original file size. You need somehow get unpacked original file size information without unpacking it self, otherwise you will lose precious time to unpack this file twice (first time for pv and second time for zcat). But fortunately you have gzip -l option that contain uncompressed information about our gziped file. Unfortunattly you have it in table format so you need to extract before it can be use it. All together can be seen below:

gzip -l /path/to/our/database.sql.gz | sed -n 2p | awk '{print $2}'

Uff.. so the last thing you need to do is just combine all together.

zcat /path/to/our/database.sql.gz | pv --progress --size `gzip -l %s | sed -n 2p | awk '{print $2}'` | mysql -uuser -ppass dbname

To make it even nicer you can add progres NAME like this

zcat /path/to/our/database.sql.gz | pv --progress --size `gzip -l %s | sed -n 2p | awk '{print $2}'` --name '  Importing.. ' | mysql -uuser -ppass dbname

Final result:

Importing.. : [===========================================>] 100%

UPDATE 3: For quick usage create custom function.

mysql_import() {
  zcat $2 | pv --progress --size `gzip -l %s | sed -n 2p | awk '{print $2}'` --name '  Importing.. ' | mysql -uuser -ppass $1
}

usage:

mysql_import dbname /path/to/our/database.sql.gz

If you don't know where to put it, read this answer: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/106606/20056

You can add functions among aliases. So you can use e.g. ~/.bash_aliases file.

Why so complicated ?

This works fine :

pv dump.sql.gz | zcat | mysql -u user -ppasswd database

I always import databases from the MySql shell. It does not provide a progress indicator, but it does (quickly) scroll the actions it is performing so I know it's working.

# mysql -u user -p -h host database
> source /path/to/some/largefile.sql;