BLKID(8)BLKID(8)NAMEblkid - command-line utility to locate/print block device attributes
SYNOPSISblkid [ -ghlLv ] [ [ -c cachefile ] -w writecachefile ] [ -o format ] [
-s tag ] [ -t NAME=value ] [ device ... ]
DESCRIPTION
The blkid program is the command-line interface to working with lib‐
blkid(3) library. It can determine the type of content (e.g. filesys‐
tem, swap) a block device holds, and also attributes (tokens,
NAME=value pairs) from the content metadata (e.g. LABEL or UUID
fields).
blkid has two main forms of operation: either searching for a device
with a specific NAME=value pair, or displaying NAME=value pairs for one
or more devices.
OPTIONS-c cachefile
Read from cachefile instead of reading from the default cache
file /etc/blkid.tab. If you want to start with a clean cache
(i.e. don't report devices previously scanned but not necessar‐
ily available at this time), specify /dev/null.
-g Perform a garbage collection pass on the blkid cache to remove
devices which no longer exist.
-h Display a usage message and exit.
-l Look up one device that matches the search parameter specified
using the -t option. If there are multiple devices that match
the specified search parameter, then the device with the highest
priority is returned, and/or the first device found at a given
priority. Device types in order of decreasing priority are
Device Mapper, EVMS, LVM, MD, and finally regular block devices.
If this option is not specified, blkid will print all of the
devices that match the search parameter.
-o format
Display blkid's output using the specified format. The format
parameter may be full (the default), value (only print the value
of the tags), list (print the devices in a user-friendly for‐
mat), or device (only print the device name).
-L Print the devices in a user-friendly list format. This is the
equivalent of using the option -o list.
-s tag For each (specified) device, show only the tags that match tag.
It is possible to specify multiple -s options. If no tag is
specified, then all tokens are shown for all (specified)
devices. In order to just refresh the cache without showing any
tokens, use -s none with no other options.
-t NAME=value
Search for block devices with tokens named NAME that have the
value value, and display any devices which are found. Common
values for NAME include TYPE, LABEL, and UUID. If there are no
devices specified on the command line, all block devices will be
searched; otherwise only the specified devices are searched.
-v Display version number and exit.
-w writecachefile
Write the device cache to writecachefile instead of writing it
to the default cache file /etc/blkid.tab. If you don't want to
save the cache to the default file, specify /dev/null. If not
specified it will be the same file as that given by the -c
option.
device Display tokens from only the specified device. It is possible
to give multiple device options on the command line. If none is
given, all devices which appear in /proc/partitions are shown,
if they are recognized.
RETURN CODE
If the specified token was found, or if any tags were shown from (spec‐
ified) devices, 0 is returned. If the specified token was not found,
or no (specified) devices could be identified, an exit code of 2 is
returned. For usage or other errors, an exit code of 4 is returned.
AUTHORblkid was written by Andreas Dilger for libblkid.
AVAILABILITYblkid is part the e2fsprogs package since version 1.26 and is available
from http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge.net.
SEE ALSOlibblkid(3)E2fsprogs version 1.41.12 May 2010 BLKID(8)