user10137: I do realize that in the early stages bitcoin has to download a lot (How long does it take to download the blockchain?), however, I assume this is like wget or rsync where it displays the progress. Right now, when I issue the command bitcoind, it just hangs and outputs nothing. Could this be due to closed ports? Is it sufficient that I opened ports on my Ubuntu router, or must I forward those ports? Alternatively, is there a command line parameter I have to issue to get the output of bitcoind?

user9512: You should be using something like so to run bitcoind as a daemon
bitcoind -daemon

And then, you can check on it like so:
bitcoind getinfo


user9790: No output is normal, it's meant to be run as a daemon. If you want to see progress however, try bitcoind -printtoconsole or tail -f ~/.bitcoin/debug.log. 

10137: <p>I do realize that in the early stages bitcoin has to download a lot (<a href="https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/9816/how-long-does-it-take-to-download-the-blockchain-its-been-over-a-day-and-still">How long does it take to download the blockchain?</a>), however, I assume this is like <code>wget</code> or <code>rsync</code> where it displays the progress. Right now, when I issue the command <code>bitcoind</code>, it just hangs and outputs nothing. Could this be due to closed ports? Is it sufficient that I opened ports on my Ubuntu router, or must I forward those ports? Alternatively, is there a command line parameter I have to issue to get the output of bitcoind?</p>
 9512: <p>You should be using something like so to run bitcoind as a daemon</p>

<pre><code>bitcoind -daemon
</code></pre>

<p>And then, you can check on it like so:</p>

<pre><code>bitcoind getinfo
</code></pre>
 9790: <p>No output is normal, it's meant to be run as a daemon. If you want to see progress however, try <code>bitcoind -printtoconsole</code> or <code>tail -f ~/.bitcoin/debug.log</code>. </p>
