Monitor dd progress on Linux with old binutils

I recent was on an Ubuntu 14.04 machine, started a long running dd to clear a disk, and then wanted to monitor progress of this command to get an indication how long it would take.

In found that my binutils (dd) were too old for the dd status=progress feature.

Sending signal USR1 to dd prints its progress:

killall -USR1 dd

Alternatively you can just look at the write file descriptor of the dd process, e.g.:

grep pos /proc/4609/fdinfo/1