UDISKS(1)

📦 version 1.0.5, in fedora 43, fedora 44

💖 UDISKS(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the udisks man page — that's manual section 1, and the tool is literally just called udisks 🦋. Sit down, hydrate, we're learning a command line client together and it's gonna be adorable.

✨ NAME ✨

udisks — the udisks command line tool, no cap 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

udisks [OPTIONS]

that's it. that's the whole vibe. options only, she doesn't take positional args 🌸

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so udisks is a simple command line client for the udisks(7) system bus service. that's the whole description. she's a client, she talks to the daemon over the system bus, and she does exactly what you tell her 🫶

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • --dump — dumps all the info about all the devices. bestie, please include this when you file bugs, the maintainers are begging 🙏
  • --enumerate — lists every object path of every device the daemon knows about. just paths, no lore.
  • --enumerate-device-files — same energy but it lists all the device files of the devices the daemon knows about instead 📁
  • --monitor — connects to the daemon and prints a line every single time an event happens. it just sits there and yaps about events, iconic behavior 👑
  • --monitor-detail — like --monitor but it prints the full details of the device every time an event happens. so much more to read, so much more to love 😭
  • --show-info device_file — shows information about device_file. yes girl, spill ☕
  • --inhibit-polling device_file [-- program arg ...] — inhibits polling on device_file. if you don't give it a program, polling stays inhibited until you hit Ctrl+C. otherwise it spawns the program and the polling is only inhibited until that program terminates. the program is basically babysitting the inhibition 🧚
  • --poll-for-media device_file — polls device_file to perform media detection. she's checking for media. that's the whole job 🔍
  • --inhibit-all-polling [-- program arg ...] — inhibits polling on all devices, every last one. no program given? inhibited until Ctrl+C. program given? it's spawned and polling is only inhibited until that program terminates. same rules, bigger scope 💀
  • --mount device_file [--mount-fstype fstype] [--mount-options options] — mounts the device represented by device_file using the file system fstype and a comma-separated list of options. mount her, bestie ⛰️
  • --unmount device_file [--unmount-options options] — unmounts the device represented by device_file, using a comma-separated list of options. say bye 🫡
  • --detach device_file [--detach-options options] — detaches the device represented by device_file using a comma-separated list of options. that's stuff like powering down the physical port the device is connected to. she's leaving the building 🚪
  • --eject device_file [--eject-options options] — ejects the media from the device represented by device_file, using a comma-separated list of options. bye-bye disc 💿
  • --ata-smart-refresh device_file [--ata-smart-wakeup] — refreshes the ATA SMART data for device_file. if the disk is sleeping, it will not be woken up unless you pass --ata-smart-wakeup. and then the original page just says will be used. — same, bestie, same, we don't know what that refers to either 😭
  • --ata-smart-refresh device_file --ata-smart-simulate blob — reads ATA SMART data from blob for device_file. this can only be done by the super user, and it's typically used for testing that clients relying on the ATA SMART data provided by udisks behave correctly. the libatasmart git repository at http://git.0pointer.de/?p=libatasmart.git;a=summary contains a collection of blobs from failing disks, if you want real-world chaos to test against 🍓
  • --inhibit [-- program arg ...] — inhibits clients from invoking methods on the daemon that require authorization. all those methods will return the org.freedesktop.UDisks.Error.Inhibited error if the caller is not the super user. this is typically used by OS installers and other programs that expect full control of the system, specifically to avoid automounting devices. only the super user can do this, so don't try it at home 🙈

if no program is given, the daemon is inhibited until Ctrl+C is pressed. otherwise the program is spawned and the daemon is only inhibited until the program terminates.

  • --set-spindown device_file --spindown-timeout seconds [-- program arg ...] — configures the disk spindown timeout on device_file to seconds. go read the section called “SPINNING DOWN DISKS” before you use this, it's important, I'm not joking around on this one 🎀

if no program is given, the spindown time will be used until Ctrl+C is pressed. otherwise the program is spawned and the spindown timeout will only be used until the program terminates.

  • --set-spindown-all --spindown-timeout seconds [-- program arg ...] — configures the disk spindown timeout on all disks that can be spun down to seconds. also go read the section called “SPINNING DOWN DISKS” first, seriously 🚨

if no program is given, the spindown time will be used until Ctrl+C is pressed. otherwise the program is spawned and the spindown timeout will only be used until the program terminates.

  • --help — show help options. the classic. the icon. the one everyone runs first 💅

🌈 SPINNING DOWN DISKS 🌈

caution should be exercised when configuring disk spin down timeouts. like, actual caution. I'm being so serious right now.

note that every time a disk is spun down, the start-stop-count ATA SMART attribute goes up by 1, and most disks are only good for a limited number of those — typically 50,000 but it varies by manufacturer and model. so every spindown is a lil tick on the odometer 🕰️

plus, the drive may take as long as 30 seconds to respond to subsequent disk access. most drives are typically faster than that — go check the spin-up-time ATA SMART attribute if you want the receipts 📉

on the other hand? cautious use (like, using conservative timeouts) of the ability to spin down disks can be a good way to trade power consumption — typically 8 vs 1 Watts for 3.5" drives — and heat emission, for a slightly higher latency. it's giving tradeoff. it's giving thermodynamics 🦋

👑 AUTHOR 👑

written by David Zeuthen <david@fubar.dk> with a lot of help from many others. a whole village, honestly 🫶

💀 BUGS 💀

please send bug reports to either the distribution bug tracker or the upstream bug tracker at http://bugs.freedesktop.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=udisks. and remember that --dump thing from earlier? yeah. that one. include it 📮

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

and that's the whole page, bestie!! this beauty is from the udisks source, dated April 2008, and lives in manual section 1 as UDISKS(1). go forth, enumerate some devices, and hydrate 💖✨🎀

📦 where this page comes from