sg_rmsn (8)

sg_rmsn [--help] [--raw] [--readonly] [--verbose] [--version] DEVICE

Send a SCSI READ MEDIA SERIAL NUMBER command to DEVICE and outputs the response.

This command is described in SPC-3 found at www.t10.org . It was originally added to SPC-3 in revision 11 (2003/2/12). It is not an mandatory command and the author has not seen any SCSI devices that support it.

Arguments to long options are mandatory for short options as well.

-h, --help

output the usage message then exit.

-r, --raw

sends the serial number (if found) to stdout. This output may contain non-printable characters (e.g. the serial number is padded with NULLs at the end so its length is a multiple of 4). The default action is to print the serial number out in ASCII-HEX with ASCII characters to the right. All error messages are sent to stderr.

-R, --readonly

opens the DEVICE read-only rather than read-write which is the default. The Linux sg driver needs read-write access for the SCSI READ MEDIA SERIAL NUMBER command but other access methods may require read-only access.

-v, --verbose

increase the level of verbosity, (i.e. debug output).

-V, --version

print the version string and then exit.

Device identification information is also found in a standard INQUIRY response and its VPD pages (see sg_vpd). The relevant VPD pages are the "device identification page" (VPD page 0x83) and the "unit serial number" page (VPD page 0x80).

The MMC-4 command set for CD/DVD/HD-DVD/BD drives has a "media serial number" feature (0x109) [and a "logical unit serial number" feature]. These can be viewed with sg_get_config.

The exit status of sg_rmsn is 0 when it is successful. Otherwise see the sg3_utils(8) man page.

Written by Douglas Gilbert.

Report bugs to <dgilbert at interlog dot com>.

Copyright © 2005-2012 Douglas Gilbert

This software is distributed under a FreeBSD license. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

sg_vpd(sg3_utils), sg_get_config(sg3_utils)