UDISKS(7)

📦 version 1.0.5, in fedora 43, fedora 44

💖 NAME 💖

udisks — Storage Management

(and yes, the manual itself is section 7, so hi, you found the right page 🫶)

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

okay so bestie, picture this: udisks is the plug that gives you an interface to enumerate storage devices and perform operations on them. that's it, that's the whole job, and it eats. 💅

any application can hit up the org.freedesktop.UDisks service on the system message bus — it's giving public access, no secret handshake. but some operations (formatting disks, the whole dramatic lineup) are restricted using polkit, so don't get any ideas, you need permission for those. ✨

🔍 DEVICE INFORMATION 🔍

on Linux, udisks leans on recent versions of udev(7) and the kernel. the device properties that actually have influence in the udev database are these ones, and honestly, pay attention, they run the whole vibe check:

  • UDISKS_PRESENTATION_HIDE — set it to 1 and it's a hint to presentation-level software that this device should not be shown to the user. ghost it, basically. 👻
  • UDISKS_PRESENTATION_NOPOLICY — set it to 1 and it's a hint to presentation-level software that the device should not be automounted or autoassembled (for e.g. components of a multi-disk device). hands off, let it be. 🙈
  • UDISKS_DISABLE_POLLING — set it to 1 and you turn off polling of drives for media changes, for devices that don't send out media notifications by themselves (this mostly affects CD drives). and listen, this one matters: some CD drives cause bad effects such as very high CPU usage when being polled. so yeah, if your CPU is screaming, iykyk. 😭
  • UDISKS_PRESENTATION_NAME — the name to use for the device when presenting it to the user. ✨
  • UDISKS_PRESENTATION_ICON_NAME — the icon to use when presenting the device to the user. if set, the name must follow the freedesktop.org icon theme specification. no freelancing. 🎀
  • UDISKS_AUTOMOUNT_HINT — a variable to influence whether a device should be automounted. possible values include "always" (hint that a device should always be automounted) and "never" (hint that a device should never be automounted). note that this is only a hint — the auto-mounter might not honor it. no cap. 🤷
  • UDISKS_SYSTEM_INTERNAL — if set, this overrides the usual bus type based detection of whether a device is considered "system internal". "0" means "removable" (i. e. eligible for automounting, and normal users can mount), any other value means "system internal" (i. e. no automounting, and only administrators can mount). choose wisely, this one's the whole personality. 👑

the ID_DRIVE_* properties are used to describe what kind of physical media can be used in a device. these are typically set on the main block device (e.g. /dev/sdb) and more than one of these properties can be set if the device supports multiple kinds of media. multitalented, honestly. 🌈

  • ID_DRIVE_EJECTABLE — whether the media in the drive is physically ejectable. only set this to 1 (or 0) if the drive truly uses (or doesn't) ejectable media. in particular, it is not necessary to set this for e.g. iPod or Kindle devices where it is necessary to send a command via eject(1) since the desktop user session will offer this option for removable devices regardless of whether they are ejectable. if this property is not set, a heuristic will be used to determine if the media is ejectable (drives using optical, Zip or Jaz media are considered ejectable).
  • ID_DRIVE_DETACHABLE — whether the device is detachable. it is only meaningful to set this to 0 (to avoid marking a device as detachable) since the code for detaching the device is part of udisks itself. if this property is not set, a heuristic will be used to determine if the drive is detachable (currently only devices connected through USB are detachable).
  • ID_DRIVE_CAN_SPINDOWN — whether the device can spin down. it is only meaningful to set this to 0 (to avoid marking a device as being capable of spinning down) since the code for spinning down the device is part of udisks itself. if this property is not set, a heuristic will be used to determine if the drive can spin down (currently only ATA devices, including those USB devices with a SAT layer, can be spun down).
  • ID_DRIVE_FLASH — the device is compatible with flash.
  • ID_DRIVE_FLASH_CF — the device is compatible with Compact Flash.
  • ID_DRIVE_FLASH_MS — the device is compatible with Memory Stick.
  • ID_DRIVE_FLASH_SM — the device is compatible with SmartMedia.
  • ID_DRIVE_FLASH_SD — the device is compatible with SecureDigital.
  • ID_DRIVE_FLASH_SDHC — the device is compatible with High-Capicity SecureDigital.
  • ID_DRIVE_FLASH_MMC — the device is compatible with MultiMediaCard.
  • ID_DRIVE_FLOPPY — the device is compatible with floppy disk.
  • ID_DRIVE_FLOPPY_ZIP — the device is compatible with Zip.
  • ID_DRIVE_FLOPPY_JAZ — the device is compatible with Jaz.

and now the ID_DRIVE_MEDIA_* properties, which describe the current media in a device. as with the ID_DRIVE_* properties, these are typically set on the main block device (e.g. /dev/sdb). typically only one of these is set. no multitasking here. 🧚

  • ID_DRIVE_MEDIA_FLASH — the physical media currently inserted into the device is flash.
  • ID_DRIVE_MEDIA_FLASH_CF — the physical media currently inserted into the device is Compact Flash.
  • ID_DRIVE_MEDIA_FLASH_MS — the physical media currently inserted into the device is Memory Stick.
  • ID_DRIVE_MEDIA_FLASH_SM — the physical media currently inserted into the device is SmartMedia.
  • ID_DRIVE_MEDIA_FLASH_SD — the physical media currently inserted into the device is SecureDigital.
  • ID_DRIVE_MEDIA_FLASH_SDHC — the physical media currently inserted into the device is High-Capicity SecureDigital.
  • ID_DRIVE_MEDIA_FLASH_MMC — the physical media currently inserted into the device is MultiMediaCard.
  • ID_DRIVE_MEDIA_FLOPPY — the physical media currently inserted into the device is floppy disk.
  • ID_DRIVE_MEDIA_FLOPPY_ZIP — the physical media currently inserted into the device is Zip.
  • ID_DRIVE_MEDIA_FLOPPY_JAZ — the physical media currently inserted into the device is Jaz.

🛰️ REMOTE CLIENTS 🛰️

TODO: write me.

literally that. the manpage said it, not me. the section is just sitting there, unfinished, main character with no lines. 😭

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Written by David Zeuthen <david@fubar.dk> with a lot of help from many others. we love a collaborative queen. 💖

🐛 BUGS 🐛

found something cursed? 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

don't suffer in silence bestie, tell the maintainers. 🫶

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

okay that's the whole page, you ate it, go forth and mount responsibly ✨

this was udisks, from the udisks source, dated March 2008, manual page UDISKS(7) — bye bestie, mwah 💅🎀

📦 where this page comes from