List removable media?

pickarooney

I'm trying to update a script I've written (to copy and rename images from a camera) to allow for several connected devices (SD card, camera via USB, USB storage device...) and I want to offer the user a choice of which removable media to copy from.

Is there any way of listing just those devices which were hot-plugged?

Johnboy1951

pickarooney wrote: »

I'm trying to update a script I've written (to copy and rename images from a camera) to allow for several connected devices (SD card, camera via USB, USB storage device...) and I want to offer the user a choice of which removable media to copy from.

Is there any way of listing just those devices which were hot-plugged?

How you do it I guess depends a lot on how the system is set up.
If the devices are mounted then their mount points will be under /media/ most likely, and this may suffice, as they must be mounted to be accessible.
If they have labels then by default the labels are likely used for the mount points.

You might also have a look at

ls /dev/disk/by-id/usb*

to see if it might be useful to you.
Unfortunately, from my point of view, it will also list USB hubs etc, so is not specific to storage volumes.

There *should* be a way to get storage volumes only ..... cannot recall at the mo ....

EDIT
To get a list of partitions this might do

ls /dev/disk/by-id/usb* | grep -i part

pickarooney

I'll have a look at that. My /media folder has a couple of internal drives mounted inside it but maybe one way would be to make a blacklist of permanent drives and then list anything else.

Up until recently, Ubuntu mounted every first plugged device at /media/disk by default and then /media/disk1 for the next one and so on but now it mounts them with an alphanumeric folder name and I don't know where it reads that from, if it's something I can interpret myself or if it's just a randomly generated string that persists on subsequent mounts.

Johnboy1951

pickarooney wrote: »

I'll have a look at that. My /media folder has a couple of internal drives mounted inside it but maybe one way would be to make a blacklist of permanent drives and then list anything else.

Up until recently, Ubuntu mounted every first plugged device at /media/disk by default and then /media/disk1 for the next one and so on but now it mounts them with an alphanumeric folder name and I don't know where it reads that from, if it's something I can interpret myself or if it's just a randomly generated string that persists on subsequent mounts.

I also mount internal partitions in the /media directory as those are temporary mounts for backups etc.
They were not enumerated in the list generated from the command above.

I don't use Ubuntu so have no idea what way they do things.

Capt'n Midnight

could you parse the output from df ?

bnt

This page has a Python script that lists USB devices: it uses HAL, which may not be present on your system by default. I just tried a slightly modified version on my Ubuntu (64-bit) machine, and it works, only detailing the removable devices I have plugged in:

import dbus  
bus = dbus.SystemBus()

proxy = bus.get_object("org.freedesktop.Hal", "/org/freedesktop/Hal/Manager")
iface = dbus.Interface(proxy, "org.freedesktop.Hal.Manager")

devices = iface.GetAllDevices ()

for device in devices:
  try:
      proxy1 = bus.get_object("org.freedesktop.Hal", device)
      iface1 = dbus.Interface(proxy1, "org.freedesktop.Hal.Device")
      props = iface1.GetAllProperties()

      removable = iface1.GetProperty("storage.removable")
      if removable == 1:
        print (iface1.GetProperty("block.device"), iface1.GetProperty("storage.vendor"), iface1.GetProperty("info.product"))
  except:
    pass

The original has a more complex print statement (with joins) which is needed for Python 2 to give plain text, but Python 3 doesn't need it.

pickarooney

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

ls /dev/disk/by-id/usb*

To get a list of partitions this might do

ls /dev/disk/by-id/usb* | grep -i part

I can get these to work but they return symlinks to the partitions and use yet another alphanumeric string which is neither the disk's UUID nor the short alphanumeric ID used for the mount folder.

I'll try the python script, see if I can wrap it in my own script.

Johnboy1951

It depends on the status of the storage volume .... if it is not yet mounted then it can be difficult to separate and the command above does separate the actual storage volumes from all other devices.

Of course if on the other hand the volumes are automatically (or previously) mounted then it becomes much easier.
Even easier again if such partitions are mounted under /media every time.

In that case maybe something like this would do - if it is the mount points you want ......

mount | grep -i /media | cut -d " " -f3

I had understood initially you wanted to get the device name only ..... but it seems you want to use the result for more than display purposes ......

Tillotson

Is this what you're looking for?

#!/bin/sh

for disk in /sys/block/*; do 
    [ $(cat $disk/removable) = 1 ] && basename $disk
done

Johnboy1951

Tillotson wrote: »

Is this what you're looking for?

#!/bin/sh

for disk in /sys/block/*; do 
    [ $(cat $disk/removable) = 1 ] && basename $disk
done

That I believe would list empty hub connections as devices, and if a device is inserted into one, would add it to the list ..... but I may be mistaken .... so not a true list of connected physical devices such as cameras, USB sticks etc

pickarooney

Sorry I haven't got back to this. I'm expecting a replacement hard drive in a couple of days and will give these tips a run out then.