Linux – How to check whether a volume is mounted where it is supposed to be using Python

linuxmountpython

I've got a backup script written in Python which creates the destination directory before copying the source directory to it. I've configured it to use /external-backup as the destination, which is where I mount an external hard drive. I just ran the script without the hard drive being turned on (or being mounted) and found that it was working as normal, albeit making a backup on the internal hard drive, which has nowhere near enough space to back itself up.

My question is: how can I check whether the volume is mounted in the right place before writing to it? If I can detect that /external-backup isn't mounted, I can prevent writing to it.

The bonus question is why was this allowed, when the OS knows that directory is supposed to live on another device, and what would happen to the data (on the internal hard drive) should I later mount that device (the external hard drive)? Clearly there can't be two copies on different devices at the same path!

Thanks in advance!

Best Answer

I would take a look at os.path.ismount().

Related Solutions

Best Way to Check if a Volume is Mounted in a Bash Script – Linux Bash

Avoid using /etc/mtab because it may be inconsistent.

Avoid piping mount because it needn't be that complicated.

Simply:

if grep -qs '/mnt/foo ' /proc/mounts; then
    echo "It's mounted."
else
    echo "It's not mounted."
fi

(The space after the /mnt/foo is to avoid matching e.g. /mnt/foo-bar.)

Linux Storage – Best Way to Get Info About Unmounted Drives

If the drives are unmounted there are several things you can do.

You can use a command like fdisk -l or sfdisk -l to list the partitions. Just the partition type may give you some useful information if the partitions where setup correct.y

# sfdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 4177 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *      0+     30      31-    248976   83  Linux
/dev/sda2         31    4176    4146   33302745   8e  Linux LVM
/dev/sda3          0       -       0          0    0  Empty
/dev/sda4          0       -       0          0    0  Empty

If it is present on your system you can use the command vol_id against a partition to return some useful details (part of the udev package on Debian). This will generally tell you what filesystem is actually being used.

# vol_id /dev/sda1

ID_FS_USAGE=filesystem
ID_FS_TYPE=ext3
ID_FS_VERSION=1.0
ID_FS_UUID=32c44d53-9025-4d10-8f36-75c166547bd5
ID_FS_UUID_ENC=32c44d53-9025-4d10-8f36-75c166547bd5
ID_FS_LABEL=
ID_FS_LABEL_ENC=
ID_FS_LABEL_SAFE=

The command lshw -class disk will give you some details about the type of drive. You might want to use this if you are curious about the actual serial number of the drive.

# lshw -class disk

  *-disk
       description: ATA Disk
       product: VBOX HARDDISK
       physical id: 0.0.0
       bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0
       logical name: /dev/sda
       version: 1.0
       serial: VB169e93fb-d1e0fd97
       size: 32GiB (34GB)
       capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
       configuration: ansiversion=5 signature=000d39f8

If you are sure the there is a particular filesystem like ext2/3 on it then you can use the filesystem specific tune2fs tool to examine more details.

# tune2fs -l /dev/sda1

tune2fs 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
Filesystem volume name:   <none>
Last mounted on:          <not available>
Filesystem UUID:          8cbdf102-05c7-4ae4-96ea-681cf9b11914
Filesystem magic number:  0xEF53
Filesystem revision #:    1 (dynamic)
Filesystem features:      filetype sparse_super
Default mount options:    (none)
Filesystem state:         not clean
Errors behavior:          Continue
Filesystem OS type:       Linux
Inode count:              124496
Block count:              248976
Reserved block count:     12448
Free blocks:              212961
Free inodes:              124467
First block:              1
Block size:               1024
Fragment size:            1024
Blocks per group:         8192
Fragments per group:      8192
Inodes per group:         4016
Inode blocks per group:   502
Last mount time:          Thu Oct  7 15:34:42 2010
Last write time:          Thu Oct  7 15:34:42 2010
Mount count:              4
Maximum mount count:      30
Last checked:             Wed Sep 15 09:29:03 2010
Check interval:           0 (<none>)
Reserved blocks uid:      0 (user root)
Reserved blocks gid:      0 (group root)
First inode:              11
Inode size:           128

Another useful tool is lsblk.

# lsblk 

NAME                MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda                   8:0    0    30G  0 disk 
└─sda1                8:1    0    30G  0 part 
  ├─vg1-root (dm-0) 254:0    0  23.3G  0 lvm  /
  └─vg1-swap (dm-1) 254:1    0   1.9G  0 lvm  [SWAP]
sr0                  11:0    1  1024M  0 rom

If you have parted installed you can run a command like this

parted /dev/sda print all

Model: ATA VBOX HARDDISK (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 34.4GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      32.3kB  255MB   255MB   primary  ext2         boot 
 2      255MB   34.4GB  34.1GB  primary               lvm  

Model: Linux device-mapper (linear) (dm)
Disk /dev/mapper/vg1root: 32.6GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: loop

Number  Start  End     Size    File system  Flags
 1      0.00B  32.6GB  32.6GB  ext3

Anyway past that I suggest you take a look at the udev or parted source.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Best Way to Check if a Volume is Mounted in a Bash Script – Linux Bash

Linux Storage – Best Way to Get Info About Unmounted Drives

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