In Linux terminal, what would "grep -q '/dev/sda1' /proc/mounts || ..." do? - linux

I want to make a bootable USB device by following this page.
http://planet-lab.org/node/172
It asks me to do these to steps:
umount /dev/sda*
grep -q /dev/sda1 /proc/mounts || dd if=PlanetLab-BootCD-3.3.usb of=/dev/sda1
But it makes me confused.
Since I think /dev/sda is my HDD, I thought it should be unmount /dev/sdb* in order to unmount USB device.
And I really don't understand what grep -q /dev/sda1 /proc/mounts is doing.
It seems to check whether "/dev/sda1" is mounted, but I don't exactly know what are the two parameters of grep command is doing. I know -q is for quiet.
And I also know dd can write an image to a drive.

The instructions state
assuming that the device is detected as /dev/sda
If the assumption is different from the actual mount point, you must modify the commands to match your configuration.
The grep -q is used to test for existence without cluttering the screen with the text which is found. The two parameters are
the text sought "/dev/sda1", and
the file in which the text is sought "/proc/mounts".
In other scripts, you may see something like
grep /dev/sda1 /proc/mounts >/dev/null
to achieve the same effect as the -q option.

Related

How to determine in bash if / mountpoint was mounted from other OS?

Im writing shell script to check if user may be doing some nasty things in Linux enviroment. One check i would like to do is determine if / filesyste was mounted using external OS (like using live SO) in previous mount.
First i think to exec script when boot to get the mount time in previous boot using journalctl and actual last mount using tune2fs, to compare it. But last mount using tune2fs gets current mount, not previous, because system is mounted when ckecks it.
Any idea to solve it?
Thanks!
dmesg's output shows about the mounting of / (and other infos as well). If your current OS's dmesg's output has that info, it was mounted by the current system.
You can use the output of dmesg in your script like :
#!/bin/bash
number=$(dmesg | grep -c "sdaN")
if [ $number == 0 ]; then
echo "It was not mounted by the current system"
else
echo "It was mounted by the current system"
fi

Correct way to detect '/proc' file system?

I'm writing a cross platform bash script. It needs to use this command #1:
cat /proc/$PID/cmdline
and if the procfs is not available (on OS X for example), it needs to fallback to this command #2:
ps -eo "pid command" | grep "^$PID"
My question is pretty simple: what is the correct way to detect if '/proc' file system exists?
The "proc filesystem" will almost always be mounted in /proc if present, but this does not have to be the case always (at least in theory). Probably a more portable way is to use mount -t proc to list mounted filesystems of type proc and extract the path from there. If the command returns no paths, procfs is not mounted and you can fall back to the alternative command.
Something along the lines of:
PROC_PATH=$(mount -t proc | egrep -o '/[^ ]+')
if [ "$PROC_PATH" ]; then
# use procfs
else
# use alternative
fi
On the other hand, ps should be more portable and always work, so maybe best solutions is just to use ps always?
Proc filesystem is mounted on /proc.
mount | awk '/proc/ {print $3}' This will show all mounted proc filesystems with full path

How to Unmount all usb pen drive from ubuntu with bash script or terminal?

I want to unmount all pen drive from ubuntu os through a bash script or from a terminal. I knew the command umount /media/MEDIA_NAME, but here we need to specify each MEDIA_NAME. Can I use a single command to unmount from terminal or bash script. Please help me.
Browsing entries in /dev/disk/by-id/ allows you to select USB disks:
for usb_dev in /dev/disk/by-id/usb-*; do
dev=$(readlink -f $usb_dev)
grep -q ^$dev /proc/mounts && umount $dev
done
Loop for each device in the /media directory.
for device in /media/*
do
umount $device
done

How to unmount a busy device [closed]

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I've got some samba drives that are being accessed by multiple users daily. I already have code to recognize shared drives (from a SQL table) and mount them in a special directory where all users can access them.
I want to know, if I remove a drive from my SQL table (effectively taking it offline) how, or even is, there a way to unmount a busy device? So far I've found that any form of umount does not work.
Ignoring the possibility of destroying data - is it possible to unmount a device that is currently being read?
YES!! There is a way to detach a busy device immediately - even if it is busy and cannot be unmounted forcefully. You may cleanup all later:
umount -l /PATH/OF/BUSY-DEVICE
umount -f /PATH/OF/BUSY-NFS (NETWORK-FILE-SYSTEM)
NOTE/CAUTION
These commands can disrupt a running process, cause data loss OR corrupt open files. Programs accessing target DEVICE/NFS files may throw errors OR could not work properly after force unmount.
Do not execute above umount commands when inside mounted path (Folder/Drive/Device) itself. First, you may use pwd command to validate your current directory path (which should not be the mounted path), then use cd command to get out of the mounted path - to unmount it later using above commands.
If possible, let us locate/identify the busy process, kill that process and then unmount the samba share/ drive to minimize damage:
lsof | grep '<mountpoint of /dev/sda1>' (or whatever the mounted device is)
pkill target_process (kills busy proc. by name | kill PID | killall target_process)
umount /dev/sda1 (or whatever the mounted device is)
Make sure that you aren't still in the mounted device when you are trying to umount.
Avoid umount -l
At the time of writing, the top-voted answer recommends using umount -l.
umount -l is dangerous or at best unsafe. In summary:
It doesn't actually unmount the device, it just removes the filesystem from the namespace. Writes to open files can continue.
It can cause btrfs filesystem corruption
Work around / alternative
The useful behaviour of umount -l is hiding the filesystem from access by absolute pathnames, thereby minimising further moutpoint usage.
This same behaviour can be achieved by mounting an empty directory with permissions 000 over the directory to be unmounted.
Then any new accesses to filenames in the below the mountpoint will hit the newly overlaid directory with zero permissions - new blockers to the unmount are thereby prevented.
First try to remount,ro
The major unmount achievement to be unlocked is the read-only remount. When you gain the remount,ro badge, you know that:
All pending data has been written to disk
All future write attempts will fail
The data is in a consistent state, should you need to physcially disconnect the device.
mount -o remount,ro /dev/device is guaranteed to fail if there are files open for writing, so try that straight up. You may be feeling lucky, punk!
If you are unlucky, focus only on processes with files open for writing:
lsof +f -- /dev/<devicename> | awk 'NR==1 || $4~/[0-9]+[uw -]/'
You should then be able to remount the device read-only and ensure a consistent state.
If you can't remount read-only at this point, investigate some of the other possible causes listed here.
Read-only re-mount achievement unlocked 🔓☑
Congratulations, your data on the mountpoint is now consistent and protected from future writing.
Why fuser is inferior to lsof
Why not use use fuser earlier? Well, you could have, but fuser operates upon a directory, not a device, so if you wanted to remove the mountpoint from the file name space and still use fuser, you'd need to:
Temporarily duplicate the mountpoint with mount -o bind /media/hdd /mnt to another location
Hide the original mount point and block the namespace:
Here's how:
null_dir=$(sudo mktemp --directory --tmpdir empty.XXXXX")
sudo chmod 000 "$null_dir"
# A request to remount,ro will fail on a `-o bind,ro` duplicate if there are
# still files open for writing on the original as each mounted instance is
# checked. https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/386570/143394
# So, avoid remount, and bind mount instead:
sudo mount -o bind,ro "$original" "$original_duplicate"
# Don't propagate/mirror the empty directory just about hide the original
sudo mount --make-private "$original_duplicate"
# Hide the original mountpoint
sudo mount -o bind,ro "$null_dir" "$original"
You'd then have:
The original namespace hidden (no more files could be opened, the problem can't get worse)
A duplicate bind mounted directory (as opposed to a device) on which
to run fuser.
This is more convoluted[1], but allows you to use:
fuser -vmMkiw <mountpoint>
which will interactively ask to kill the processes with files open for writing. Of course, you could do this without hiding the mount point at all, but the above mimicks umount -l, without any of the dangers.
The -w switch restricts to writing processes, and the -i is interactive, so after a read-only remount, if you're it a hurry you could then use:
fuser -vmMk <mountpoint>
to kill all remaining processes with files open under the mountpoint.
Hopefully at this point, you can unmount the device. (You'll need to run umount on the mountpoint twice if you've bind mounted a mode 000 directory on top.)
Or use:
fuser -vmMki <mountpoint>
to interactively kill the remaining read-only processes blocking the unmount.
Dammit, I still get target is busy!
Open files aren't the only unmount blocker. See here and here for other causes and their remedies.
Even if you've got some lurking gremlin which is preventing you from fully unmounting the device, you have at least got your filesystem in a consistent state.
You can then use lsof +f -- /dev/device to list all processes with open files on the device containing the filesystem, and then kill them.
[1] It is less convoluted to use mount --move, but that requires mount --make-private /parent-mount-point which has implications. Basically, if the mountpoint is mounted under the / filesystem, you'd want to avoid this.
Try the following, but before running it note that the -k flag will kill any running processes keeping the device busy.
The -i flag makes fuser ask before killing.
fuser -kim /address # kill any processes accessing file
unmount /address
Before unmounted the filesysem. we need to check is any process holding or using the filesystem. That's why it show device is busy or filesystem is in use.
run below command to find out the processes using by a filesystem:
fuser -cu /local/mnt/
It will show how many processes holding/using the filesystem.
local/mnt: 1725e(root) 5645c(shasankarora)
ps -ef | grep 1725 <--> ps -ef | grep <pid>
kill -9 pid
Kill all the processes and then you will able to unmount the partition/busy device.
Check for exported NFS file systems with exportfs -v. If found, remove with exportfs -d share:/directory. These don't show up in the fuser/lsof listing, and can prevent umount from succeeding.
Just in case someone has the same pb. :
I couldn't unmount the mount point (here /mnt) of a chroot jail.
Here are the commands I typed to investigate :
$ umount /mnt
umount: /mnt: target is busy.
$ df -h | grep /mnt
/dev/mapper/VGTout-rootFS 4.8G 976M 3.6G 22% /mnt
$ fuser -vm /mnt/
USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
/mnt: root kernel mount /mnt
$ lsof +f -- /dev/mapper/VGTout-rootFS
$
As you can notice, even lsof returns nothing.
Then I had the idea to type this :
$ df -ah | grep /mnt
/dev/mapper/VGTout-rootFS 4.8G 976M 3.6G 22% /mnt
dev 2.9G 0 2.9G 0% /mnt/dev
$ umount /mnt/dev
$ umount /mnt
$ df -ah | grep /mnt
$
Here it was a /mnt/dev bind to /dev that I had created to be able to repair my system inside from the chroot jail.
After umounting it, my pb. is now solved.
Check out umount2:
Linux 2.1.116 added the umount2() system call, which, like umount(),
unmounts a target, but allows additional flags controlling the
behaviour of the operation:
MNT_FORCE (since Linux 2.1.116) Force unmount even if busy. (Only for
NFS mounts.)
MNT_DETACH (since Linux 2.4.11) Perform a lazy unmount:
make the mount point unavailable for new accesses, and actually
perform the unmount when the mount point ceases to be busy.
MNT_EXPIRE (since Linux 2.6.8) Mark the mount point as expired. If a mount point
is not currently in use, then an initial call to umount2() with this
flag fails with the error EAGAIN, but marks the mount point as
expired. The mount point remains expired as long as it isn't accessed
by any process. A second umount2() call specifying MNT_EXPIRE unmounts
an expired mount point. This flag cannot be specified with either
MNT_FORCE or MNT_DETACH.
I recently had a similar need to unmount in order to change it's label with gparted.
/dev/sda1 was being mounted via /etc/fstab as /media/myusername. When attempts to unmount failed, I researched the error. I had forgotten to unmount a dual partitioned thumb drive with a mountpoint on /dev/hda1 first.
I gave 'lsof' a go as recommended.
$ sudo lsof | grep /dev/sda1
The output of which was:
lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfsd-fuse file system /run/user/1000/gvfs
Output information may be incomplete.
lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse file system /run/user/1000/doc
Output information may be incomplete.
Since lsof burped up two fuse warnings, I poked around in /run/user/1000/*, and took a guess that it could be open files or mount points (or both) interfering with things.
Since the mount points live in /media/, I tried again with:
$ sudo lsof | grep /media
The same two warnings, but this time it returned additional info:
bash 4350 myusername cwd DIR 8,21 4096 1048577 /media
sudo 36302 root cwd DIR 8,21 4096 1048577 /media
grep 36303 myusername cwd DIR 8,21 4096 1048577 /media
lsof 36304 root cwd DIR 8,21 4096 1048577 /media
lsof 36305 root cwd DIR 8,21 4096 1048577 /media
Still scratching my head, it was at this point I remembered the thumb drive sticking out of the USB port. Maybe the scratching helped.
So I unmounted the thumb drive partitions (unmounting one automatically unmounted the other) and safefly unplugged the thumb drive. After doing so, I was able to unmount /dev/sda1 (having nothing mounted on it anymore), relabel it with gparted, remount both the drive and thumb drive with no issues whatsoever.
Bacon saved.
Someone has mentioned that if you are using terminal and your current directory is inside the path which you want to unmount, you will get the error.
As a complementary, in this case, your lsof | grep path-to-be-unmounted must have below output:
bash ... path-to-be-unmounted
sudo fusermount -u -z <mounted path>
NB: do not use completition for the path as this will also freeze the terminal.
Another alternative when anything works is editing /etc/fstab, adding noauto flag and rebooting the machine. The device won't be mounted, and when you're finished doing whatever, remove flag and reboot again.
Niche Answer:
If you have a zfs pool on that device, at least when it's a file-based pool, lsof will not show the usage. But you can simply run
sudo zpool export mypool
and then unmount.
Multiple mounts inside a folder
An additional reason could be a secondary mount inside your primary mount folder, e.g. after you worked on an SD card for an embedded device:
# mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt # root partition which contains /boot
# mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/boot # boot partition
Unmounting /mnt will fail:
# umount /mnt
umount: /mnt: target is busy.
First we have to unmount the boot folder and then the root:
# umount /mnt/boot
# umount /mnt
In my case, I couldn't unmount a partition that was mounted to a directory that was an AFP share. (sharing into an Apple bonjour/avahi mdns world)
I moved all the logins on the server to their home directory; I moved all the remotely connected Macs to some other directory.
I still couldn't unmount the partition even with umount -f
So I restarted the netatalk daemon on the server.
(/etc/netatalk/afp.conf has in it the share assignment)
After the netatalk restart, umount succeeded without the -f.

Simulate a faulty block device with read errors?

I'm looking for an easier way to test my application against faulty block devices that generate i/o read errors when certain blocks are read. Trying to use a physical hard drive with known bad blocks is a pain and I would like to find a software solution if one exists.
I did find the Linux Disk Failure Simulation Driver which allows creating an interface that can be configured to generate errors when certain ranges of blocks are read, but it is for the 2.4 Linux Kernel and hasn't been updated for 2.6.
What would be perfect would be an losetup and loop driver that also allowed you to configure it to return read errors when attempting to read from a given set of blocks.
It's not a loopback device you're looking for, but rather device-mapper.
Use dmsetup to create a device backed by the "error" target. It will show up in /dev/mapper/<name>.
Page 7 of the Device mapper presentation (PDF) has exactly what you're looking for:
dmsetup create bad_disk << EOF
0 8 linear /dev/sdb1 0
8 1 error
9 204791 linear /dev/sdb1 9
EOF
Or leave out the sdb1 parts to and put the "error" target as the device for blocks 0 - 8 (instead of sdb1) to make a pure error disk.
See also The Device Mapper appendix from "RHEL 5
Logical Volume Manager Administration".
There's also a flakey target - a combo of linear and error that sometimes succeeds. Also a delay to introduce intentional delays for testing.
It seems like Linux's built-in fault injection capabilities would be a good idea to use.
Blog: http://blog.wpkg.org/2007/11/08/using-fault-injection/
Reference: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/fault-injection/fault-injection.txt
The easiest way to play with block devices is using nbd.
Download the userland sources from git://github.com/yoe/nbd.git and modify nbd-server.c to fail at reading or writing on whichever areas you want it to fail on, or to fail in a controllably random pattern, or basically anything you want.
I would like to elaborate on Peter Cordes answer.
In bash, setup an image on a loopback device with ext4, then write a file to it named binary.bin.
imageName=faulty.img
mountDir=$(pwd)/mount
sudo umount $mountDir ## make sure nothing is mounted here
dd if=/dev/zero of=$imageName bs=1M count=10
mkfs.ext4 $imageName
loopdev=$(sudo losetup -P -f --show $imageName); echo $loopdev
mkdir $mountDir
sudo mount $loopdev $mountDir
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER mount
echo "2ed99f0039724cd194858869e9debac4" | xxd -r -p > $mountDir/binary.bin
sudo umount $mountDir
in python3 (since bash struggles to deal with binary data) search for the magic binary data in binary.bin
import binascii
with open("faulty.img", "rb") as fd:
s = fd.read()
search = binascii.unhexlify("2ed99f0039724cd194858869e9debac4")
beg=0
find = s.find(search, beg); beg = find+1; print(find)
start_sector = find//512; print(start_sector)
then back in bash mount the faulty block device
start_sector=## copy value from variable start_sector in python
next_sector=$(($start_sector+1))
size=$(($(wc -c $imageName|cut -d ' ' -f1)/512))
len=$(($size-$next_sector))
echo -e "0\t$start_sector\tlinear\t$loopdev\t0" > fault_config
echo -e "$start_sector\t1\terror" >> fault_config
echo -e "$next_sector\t$len\tlinear\t$loopdev\t$next_sector" >> fault_config
cat fault_config | sudo dmsetup create bad_drive
sudo mount /dev/mapper/bad_drive $mountDir
finally we can test the faulty block device by reading a file
cat $mountDir/binary.bin
which produces the error:
cat: /path/to/your/mount/binary.bin: Input/output error
clean up when you're done with testing
sudo umount $mountDir
sudo dmsetup remove bad_drive
sudo losetup -d $loopdev
rm fault_config $imageName

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