Stupid Linux HDD question.

[theweaselking]

Is there an easy way to have the machine tell me which hard disks it can see, and what their device names/numbers are, even though they might be unmounted or unformatted? An equivalent to Windows' Disk Management?

Debian 4 in the specific case, but a general would also be nice.

EDIT: Hmm, /dev/disk/by-id/ is a veeeeeery interesting folder. Will that show disks that aren't partitioned, though?

Comments

[mhoye.livejournal.com]

lshw -businfo ?

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

fdisk -l

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That requires a device ID, doesn't it?

And while going through /dev/sda1-X and /dev/hda1-X and /dev/md0-X works, it's less than ideal.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Nope, just shows them all, at least on Pubuntu.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I was sure I'd tried that yesterday, so right now I tried it again, and got nothing.

Then I thought about it for a second.

When I told the machine to SUDO make me a sandwich, it worked.

I facepalmed.
I am clever.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

GOLD STAR!

[alumiere.livejournal.com]

To find the mounts try: cat /etc/fstab
That tells you what's being used in the file system, and should show unformatted stuff.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That tells you what the machine attempts to mount on startup. It doesn't tell you about anything that *isn't* mounted on startup.

"mount" tells you what's currently mounted even if you've manually mounted/unmounted devices after startup, but again, that won't tell me if there's a /dev/sdd that I don't have mounted.

[bloodrage.livejournal.com]

blkid

lists all block devices, including their UUID

[luminalflux.livejournal.com]

Doesn't show devices really, it shows filesystem labels from what I can tell. It will show the LVM volumes, but not the physical device they're on (i e /dev/var01/lv01 instead of /dev/sdc). But that's probably enough for our mustelid regent's purposes.

[luminalflux.livejournal.com]

/dev/disk/by-id/ in CentOS 5 on vmware only shows the virtual CDROM. /by-uuid/ shows sda1 and sdb1, which exist and are in use, but doesn't show sdc which is used for LVM. /by-path/ seems to show all partitions I have on that machine from what I can tell.

Of course, for the sake of consitency, my physical CentOS 5 machine only has by-label and by-uuid.