lsblk(8)

lsblk(8) is a new util that will be available in util-linux-2.19 (coming soon;-). The util lists all block devices as a tree. This output is very useful on machines with complicated storage setup (e.g. RAID, dm-crypt, ...). It's so useful that we'll probably backport lsblk(8) to RHEL-6 to make life easier for people who need to debug their systems.

The original idea comes from "dmsetup ls --tree", but lsblk(8) is better :-) It uses "holders" and "slaves" from /sys filesystem. This means that the util is usable without root permissions and it works for all types of block devices (dmsetup uses DM ioctls).

For example my laptop with dm-crypted $HOME and partitioned RAID0 (md8) on scsi_debug device (sdc):

$ lsblk
NAME                 MAJ:MIN RA   SIZE RO MOUNTPOINT
sda                    8:0    0  93.2G  0
├─sda1                 8:1    0   102M  0 /mnt/test
├─sda2                 8:2    0     1K  0
├─sda3                 8:3    0   2.3G  0 [SWAP]
├─sda4                 8:4    0  76.2G  0 /
├─sda5                 8:5    0    10G  0
│ └─kzak-home (dm-0) 253:0    0    10G  0 /home/kzak
└─sda6                 8:6    0   4.7G  0 /boot
sdc                    8:32   0   500M  0
├─sdc1                 8:33   0   250M  0
│ └─md8                9:8    0 498.9M  0
│   ├─md8p1          259:0    0   100M  0
│   ├─md8p2          259:1    0   100M  0
│   └─md8p3          259:2    0 297.9M  0
└─sdc2                 8:34   0   249M  0
  └─md8                9:8    0 498.9M  0
    ├─md8p1          259:0    0   100M  0
    ├─md8p2          259:1    0   100M  0
    └─md8p3          259:2    0 297.9M  0

You can also list more details about devices. The next example is from scsi_debug device with 4KiB sectors and enabled alignment offset:

$ lsblk --topology /dev/sdb
NAME   ALIGNMENT MIN-IO OPT-IO PHY-SEC LOG-SEC ROTA SCHED
sdb         3584   4096  32768    4096     512    0 cfq
├─sdb1         0   4096  32768    4096     512    0 cfq
└─sdb2         0   4096  32768    4096     512    0 cfq

lsblk(8) is also usable in script, for example:

$ lsblk --nodeps --noheading --raw -o ALIGNMENT /dev/sdb
3584

returns only alignment-offset for device sdb.

Thanks to Milan Broz (from Red Hat) who is author of the original lsblk(8) prototype.

util-linux is without -ng

The util-linux-ng project was officially merged into util-linux in last days. It means that there is no more -ng fork. Fortunately, the change was pretty simple, because the original util-linux project was inactive in last four years. It was enough to rename mailing list, git repository and directories at kernel.org. Note that the old addresses still work and all is redirected to the new stuff.

The last remaining problem is to rename the mailing list at gmane.org (http://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.utilities.util-linux-ng/). I don't want to lost the list history, so the renaming seems as a better way than remove old list and add a new list (without -ng). Let's hope that gmane admins will be able to do the change.

See
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.file-systems/49137 for more details about new URLs and addresses.

Thanks to Kay, Adrian, John and David.