udisksctl1
The udisks command line tool
Usage
udisksctl status
udisksctl info
{--object-path
OBJECT | --block-device
DEVICE | --drive
DRIVE}
udisksctl mount
{--object-path
OBJECT | --block-device
DEVICE}
[--filesystem-type
TYPE]
[--options
OPTIONS ...]
[--no-user-interaction]
udisksctl unmount
{--object-path
OBJECT | --block-device
DEVICE}
[--force]
[--no-user-interaction]
udisksctl unlock
{--object-path
OBJECT | --block-device
DEVICE}
[--no-user-interaction]
[--key-file
PATH]
[--read-only]
udisksctl lock
{--object-path
OBJECT | --block-device
DEVICE}
[--no-user-interaction]
udisksctl loop-setup
--file
PATH
[--read-only]
[--offset
OFFSET]
[--size
SIZE]
[--no-user-interaction]
udisksctl loop-delete
{--object-path
OBJECT | --block-device
DEVICE}
[--no-user-interaction]
udisksctl power-off
{--object-path
OBJECT | --block-device
DEVICE}
[--no-user-interaction]
udisksctl smart-simulate
--file
PATH
{--object-path
OBJECT | --block-device
DEVICE}
[--no-user-interaction]
udisksctl monitor
udisksctl dump
udisksctl help
Overview
udisksctl is a command-line program used to interact with the udisksd(8) daemon process.
Commands
status
Shows high-level information about disk drives and block devices.
info
Shows detailed information about OBJECT, DEVICE or DRIVE.
mount
Mounts a device. The device will be mounted in a subdirectory in the /run/media hierarchy - upon successful completion, the mount point will be printed to standard output.
-
-t, --filesystem-type -
Filesystem type to use. If not specified, autodetected filesystem type will be used.
-
-o, --options -
The device will be mounted with a safe set of default options. You can influence the options passed to the mount(8) command using this option. Note that only safe options are allowed - requests with inherently unsafe options such as suid or dev that would allow the caller to gain additional privileges, are rejected.
unmount
Unmounts a device. This only works if the device is mounted. The option --force can be used to request that the device is unmounted even if active references exists.
-
-f, --force -
Lazy unmount. Detach the filesystem from the file hierarchy now, and clean up all references to this filesystem as soon as it is not busy anymore.
unlock
Unlocks an encrypted device. The passphrase will be requested from the controlling terminal and upon successful completion, the cleartext device will be printed to standard output.
-
--key-file=PATH -
Read passphrase from the given file.
lock
Locks a device. This only works if the device is a cleartext device backed by a cryptotext device.
loop-setup
Sets up a loop device backed by FILE.
-
-f, --file=FILE -
File to set up a loop device for.
-
-r, --read-only -
Set up a read-only loop device.
-
-o, --offset=OFFSET -
The data start is moved OFFSET bytes into the specified file.
-
-s, --size=SIZE -
The data end is set to no more than SIZE bytes after the data start.
loop-delete
Tears down a loop device.
power-off
Arranges for the drive to be safely removed and powered off. On the OS side this includes ensuring that no process is using the drive, then requesting that in-flight buffers and caches are committed to stable storage. The exact steps for powering off the drive depends on the drive itself and the interconnect used. For drives connected through USB, the effect is that the USB device will be deconfigured followed by disabling the upstream hub port it is connected to.
Note that as some physical devices contain multiple drives (for example 4-in-1 flash card reader USB devices) powering off one drive may affect other drives. As such there are not a lot of guarantees associated with performing this action. Usually the effect is that the drive disappears as if it was unplugged.
smart-simulate
Sets SMART data from the libatasmart blob given by FILE - see /usr/share/doc/libatasmart-devel-VERSION/ for blobs shipped with libatasmart. This is a debugging feature used to check that applications act correctly when a disk is failing.
-
-f, --file=FILE -
File with the libatasmart blob.
monitor
Monitors the daemon for events.
dump
Prints the current state of the daemon.
help
Prints help and exit.
Device specification
For commands that require a device as an argument following options can be used to specify it.
-b, --block-device=DEVICE
Specify a device by its device file path. For example /dev/sda.
-p, --object-path=OBJECT
Specify a device by the UDisks internal object path without the /org/freedesktop/UDisks2 prefix. For example block_devices/sda for the /dev/sda disk.
-d, --drive=DRIVE
Specify a drive by name, for example VirtIO_Disk. This can be currently used only together with the info command.
Options
The option --no-user-interaction can be used to request that no interaction (such as the user being presented with an authentication dialog) must occur when checking with polkit(8) whether the caller is authorized to perform the requested action.
Audience
This program does not assume that the caller is the super user - it is intended to be used by unprivileged users and authorizations are checked by the udisks daemon using polkit(8). Additionally, this program is not intended to be used by scripts or other programs - options/commands may change in incompatible ways in the future even in maintenance releases. See the “API STABILITY” section of udisks(8) for more information.
Bash completion
udisksctl ships with a bash completion script to complete commands, objects, block devices and some options.
Releases
7 releases since Debian 8 (Jessie); the text changed 6 times.
--file since Debian 11 (Bullseye);
--filesystem-type since Debian 11 (Bullseye);
--force since Debian 11 (Bullseye);
--key-file since Debian 11 (Bullseye);
--offset since Debian 11 (Bullseye);
--options since Debian 11 (Bullseye);
--read-only since Debian 11 (Bullseye);
--size since Debian 11 (Bullseye);
-f since Debian 11 (Bullseye);
-o since Debian 11 (Bullseye);
-r since Debian 11 (Bullseye);
-s since Debian 11 (Bullseye);
-t since Debian 11 (Bullseye).