bash, search for usb storage devices. output location - linux

Question

I am looking for a way to list any usb connected devices or removable storage media.
I will be using this list for a gtk boot media writer, so a user can easily write an iso to a usb.
This creates a perfect list of ALL partitions:
ls /dev | grep "[sh]d[a-z][1-9]"
How can I get a similar looking list that is only removable media?

Answer 1

On my system (Ubuntu 12.04), I can get a list of USB devices and partitions with
ls /dev/disk/by-path/*usb*
giving
/dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:02.1-usb-0:1.1:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0
/dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:02.1-usb-0:1.1:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part1
or partitions alone
ls /dev/disk/by-path/*usb*part*
These are symbolic links, pointing to the real device files, /dev/sdd and /dev/sdd1 for example.
I have tested this with a USB stick and an external USB hard disk only. I cannot say, whether or how this works with eSATA or Firewire disks.

Answer 2

Based on the answer of Olaf Dietsche, I end up with the following:
devs=`ls -al /dev/disk/by-path/*usb*part* 2>/dev/null | awk '{print($11)}'`; for dev in $devs; do dev=${dev##*\/}; echo -n "$dev ("; echo -n `mount | grep \`echo -E ${dev}\` | awk '{print($3)}'`; echo ")"; done
For me the above code is showing the usb devices and where they are mounted (between parentheses). It worked on Ubuntu 13.04 and 12.04.2, but I do not know if it will work on any other system.

Answer 3

Maybe you can use the output of lsusb command :
lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0db0:3870 Micro Star International
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 14cd:6116 Super Top M6116 SATA Bridge

Answer 4

To get the mounted path of usb storage use
mount|grep /media|awk '{print $3}'
explanation to command
mount will print all the mounted drives and grep will display only drives mounted in /media, (considering /media is default mount point ) this output is piped to awk which will print the mounted path of usb drive

Answer 5

bootiso BASH utility just do that when called with -l option. Here is the output of a slightly modified bash snippet:
/dev/sdd /dev/sde
Relevant snippet:
printUSBDevices() {
typeset -a usbDevices
typeset -a devices
getDeviceType() {
typeset deviceName=/sys/block/${1#/dev/}
typeset deviceType=$(udevadm info --query=property --path="$deviceName" | grep -Po 'ID_BUS=\K\w+')
echo "$deviceType"
}
mapfile -t devices < <(lsblk -o NAME,TYPE | grep --color=never -oP '^\K\w+(?=\s+disk$)')
for device in "${devices[#]}" ; do
if [ "$(getDeviceType "/dev/$device")" == "usb" ]; then
usbDevices+=("/dev/$device")
fi
done
echo "${usbDevices[#]}"
}
printUSBDevices