UDISKS

Section: udisks (7)
Updated: March 2008
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NAME

udisks - Storage Management

DESCRIPTION

udisks provides an interface to enumerate storage devices and perform operations on them. Any application can access the org.freedesktop.UDisks service on the system message bus. Some operations (such as formatting disks etc.) is restricted using polkit.

DEVICE INFORMATION

On Linux, udisks relies on recent versions of udev(7) and the kernel. Influential device properties in the udev database include:

UDISKS_PRESENTATION_HIDE

: If set to 1 this is a hint to presentation level software that the device should not be shown to the user.

UDISKS_PRESENTATION_NOPOLICY

: If set to 1 this is a hint to presentation level software that the device should not be automounted or autoassembled (for e.g. components of a multi-disk device).

UDISKS_DISABLE_POLLING

: If set to 1 this will disable the polling of drives for media changes, for devices which do not send out media notifications by themselves (this mostly affects CD drives). Some CD drives cause bad effects such as very high CPU usage when being polled.

UDISKS_PRESENTATION_NAME

: The name to user 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.

UDISKS_AUTOMOUNT_HINT

: A variable to influence whether a device should be automounted. Possible values include "always" (to hint that a device should always be automounted) and "never" (to hint that a device should never be automounted). Note that this is only a hint - the auto-mounter might not honor it.

UDISKS_SYSTEM_INTERNAL

: If set, this will override 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).

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 these properties can be set if the device supports multiple kinds of media.

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.

The ID_DRIVE_MEDIA_* properties describe the current media in a device. As with the ID_DRIVE_* properties, these properties are typically set on the main block device (e.g. /dev/sdb). Typically only one of these properties are set.

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.

AUTHOR

Written by David Zeuthen <david@fubar.dk> with a lot of help from many others.

BUGS

Please send bug reports to either the distribution bug tracker or the upstream bug tracker at m[blue]http://bugs.freedesktop.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=udisksm[].