1 .\" Copyright 2000 Andreas Dilger (adilger@turbolinux.com)
3 .\" This man page was created for blkid from e2fsprogs-1.25.
5 .\" This file may be copied under the terms of the GNU Public License.
7 .\" Based on uuidgen, Mon Sep 17 10:42:12 2000, Andreas Dilger
8 .TH BLKID 8 "@E2FSPROGS_MONTH@ @E2FSPROGS_YEAR@" "E2fsprogs version @E2FSPROGS_VERSION@"
10 blkid \- command\-line utility to locate/print block device attributes
42 program is the command-line interface to working with
44 library. It can determine the type of content (e.g. filesystem, swap)
45 a block device holds, and also attributes (tokens, NAME=value pairs)
46 from the content metadata (e.g. LABEL or UUID fields).
49 has two main forms of operation: either searching for a device with a
50 specific NAME=value pair, or displaying NAME=value pairs for one or
57 instead of reading from the default cache file
59 If you want to start with a clean cache (i.e. don't report devices previously
60 scanned but not necessarily available at this time), specify
64 Display a usage message and exit.
67 Look up the device that matches the search parameter specified using
70 option, assuming that there is only one matching the search parameter.
71 For a system with a large number of disks, this will be more
72 efficient by avoiding the need to revalidate devices unless absolutely
73 necessary. If this option is not specified,
75 will use a less efficient approach, which allows
77 to print all of the devices that match the search parameter.
79 This option is best used for tag searches such as
82 .IR UUID=e280469a-d06f-4c0b-b068-44f3b576029e .
85 to print all of the ext3 filesystems using a search parameter
88 then this option should
95 output using the specified format. The
101 (only print the value of any tags printed by
105 (only print the device name).
108 Show only the tags for each (specified) device that match
110 It is possible to specify multiple
112 options. If no tag is specified, then all tokens are shown for all
114 In order to just refresh the cache without showing any tokens use
116 with no other options.
119 Search for block devices with tokens named
123 and display any devices which are found.
131 If there are no devices specified on the command line, all block devices
132 will be searched; otherwise, only search the devices specified by the user.
135 Display version number and exit.
139 Write the device cache to
141 instead of writing it to the default cache file
143 If you don't want to save the cache to the default file, specify
145 If not specified it will be the same file as that given by the
150 Display tokens from only the specified device. It is possible to
153 options on the command line. If none is given, all devices which
156 are shown, if they are recognized.
158 If the specified token was found, or if any tags were shown from (specified)
159 devices 0 is returned. If the specified token was not found, or no
160 (specified) devices could be identified, an exit code of 2 is returned.
161 For usage or other errors, an exit code of 4 is returned.
164 was written by Andreas Dilger for libblkid.
167 is part the e2fsprogs package since version 1.26 and is available from
168 http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge.net.