how to determine USB drive?

[sluge]

Hello!
Is any way to 100% determine that some of sda, sdb, sdc, etc is a USB key, USB hard drive, memory card's reader or other USB device using shell commands?

[hadrons123]

dmesg output shall give an idea.

[satanselbow]

Give all your filesystems / USB sticks labels and you won't lose track of what is what

sudo blkid

would also spew some useful info in addition to the dmesg command above

lsscsi gives nice readable output:

$ lsscsi
[0:0:0:0] disk ATA Hitachi HDP72505 GM4O /dev/sda
[1:0:0:0] cd/dvd Optiarc DVD RW AD-7241S 1.03 /dev/sr0
[2:0:0:0] disk ATA Hitachi HDP72505 GM4O /dev/sdb
[3:0:0:0] disk ATA OCZ-AGILITY3 2.15 /dev/sdc
[8:0:0:0] disk Generic USB SD Reader 1.00 /dev/sdd
[8:0:0:1] disk Generic USB CF Reader 1.01 /dev/sde
[8:0:0:2] disk Generic USB SM Reader 1.02 /dev/sdf
[8:0:0:3] disk Generic USB MS Reader 1.03 /dev/sdg

It is even more clear which bus the storage device is on if you you the -v flag.

If you don't already have just install with "yum install lsscsi"

[DBelton]

actually, if you use lsscsi, the regular output (as shown above) doesn't tell you is it is usb or not. What you see is what happens to be pulled from the drive itself in the 2 fields.

[root@tower20 ~]# lsscsi
[2:0:0:0]    disk    ATA      ST3500630AS      3.AA  /dev/sda 
[2:0:1:0]    disk    ATA      WDC WD2001FASS-0 05.0  /dev/sdb 
[3:0:0:0]    cd/dvd  TSSTcorp CDW/DVD TS-H493A CD07  /dev/sr0 
[4:0:0:0]    disk    Seagate  BlackArmorDAS35  412D  /dev/sdc 
[5:0:0:0]    disk    PNY      USB 2.0 FD       8192  /dev/sdd

But, if you use lsscsi --transport (or lsscsi -t) then it will tell you if it is USB and even what USB bus and port it is on.

[root@tower20 ~]# lsscsi -t
[2:0:0:0]    disk    ata:                            /dev/sda 
[2:0:1:0]    disk    ata:                            /dev/sdb 
[3:0:0:0]    cd/dvd  ata:                            /dev/sr0 
[4:0:0:0]    disk    usb: 1-4:1.0                    /dev/sdc 
[5:0:0:0]    disk    usb: 1-6:1.0                    /dev/sdd

You could read that in and test that third field to see if it is equal to usb

Originally Posted by DBelton

actually, if you use lsscsi, the regular output (as shown above) doesn't tell you is it is usb or not. What you see is what happens to be pulled from the drive itself in the 2 fields.

[root@tower20 ~]# lsscsi
[2:0:0:0]    disk    ATA      ST3500630AS      3.AA  /dev/sda 
[2:0:1:0]    disk    ATA      WDC WD2001FASS-0 05.0  /dev/sdb 
[3:0:0:0]    cd/dvd  TSSTcorp CDW/DVD TS-H493A CD07  /dev/sr0 
[4:0:0:0]    disk    Seagate  BlackArmorDAS35  412D  /dev/sdc 
[5:0:0:0]    disk    PNY      USB 2.0 FD       8192  /dev/sdd

But, if you use lsscsi --transport (or lsscsi -t) then it will tell you if it is USB and even what USB bus and port it is on.

[root@tower20 ~]# lsscsi -t
[2:0:0:0]    disk    ata:                            /dev/sda 
[2:0:1:0]    disk    ata:                            /dev/sdb 
[3:0:0:0]    cd/dvd  ata:                            /dev/sr0 
[4:0:0:0]    disk    usb: 1-4:1.0                    /dev/sdc 
[5:0:0:0]    disk    usb: 1-6:1.0                    /dev/sdd

You could read that in and test that third field to see if it is equal to usb

Or use the -v flag like I said. It outputs the bus to which the device is attached from /sys

[sea]

Another nice command is: lsblk

[simon@l670 ~]$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 298,1G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   400M  0 part 
├─sda2   8:2    0  99,7G  0 part 
├─sda3   8:3    0   125G  0 part /home
├─sda4   8:4    0     1K  0 part 
├─sda5   8:5    0  31,4G  0 part /
├─sda6   8:6    0   768M  0 part [SWAP]
└─sda7   8:7    0  15,9G  0 part 
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom