Another way to restore files with the mysql command line client is like this:
$ mysql -u username -p database
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 2933685
--8<-- snip --8<--
mysql> source location/to/your/dump.sql
The source command will read the dump file and apply it to the server just like the < redirection operator, but with two differences: you will see continuous "x rows affected" messages scrolling by, giving you some indication that progress is actually occurring. The down-side of this method is that, unlike the method using < redirection, if there are any errors in the dump file, the command line client will just try to keep going, which is not always what you want. Still, it might be a viable approach.
Or... the way you're doing it now, if you can see the connection in the processlist, check the value for Sleep. If the value is constantly 0, then some kind of activity is occurring.