How to Mount USB to access files from Terminal

Question

I can access files from emplorer or Nautilus but how to do the same job from Terminal .

How to Mount USB to access files from Terminal. And whats the complete process of doing it.

This will be my first time of Mounting

Answer 1

That's simple. When I want to use a usb drive in terminal I do this:

Create a folder in Desktop (it can be in anywhere) with

mkdir /home/**user**/Desktop/mountDrive 

This folder will be used for the mount point. Use this command:

sudo mount /dev/sdd1 /home/user/Desktop/mountDrive 

Then you can navigate to folder you already mounted with

cd /home/user/Desktop/mountDrive

If you want to list the files in drive you can use the ls command.

To unmount the drive you can use

sudo umount /dev/sdd1

Note that in my system the usb drive is /dev/sdd1, but in your system it may be something different. To find out what it is use the df command to see all disks connected at the present time. And I have used user for the user folder; you should use your own folder according to your username.

Answer 2

In addition to using the standard mount command (which requires root) you can mount drives using udisks and dbus with your standard user.

To do this it is useful (but not required) to know a few things about the drive first:

1. What device it is (i.e. /dev/sdb1)
2. what filesystem it uses.

Knowing these you can use a simple command to mount a drive from the command line.

gdbus call --system --dest org.freedesktop.UDisks --object-path /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/<device> --method org.freedesktop.UDisks.Device.FilesystemMount "<filesystem>" []

this call should echo the path it is mounted at if the mount succeeds.

To unmount drives mounted in this way you can run:

gdbus call --system --dest org.freedesktop.UDisks --object-path /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/<device> --method org.freedesktop.UDisks.Device.FilesystemUnmount []

---

N.B. the <device> is simply the end of the path to it. So for example if what you want to mount is at /dev/sdb2 then you would put sdb2 in place of <device>.

---

If you do not know which device it is or what filesystem it uses do not fear. You can easily print out all that information with this little command:

gdbus introspect --system --dest org.freedesktop.UDisks --object-path /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices --recurse --only-properties | grep -E "(readonly .+ (IdLabel|IdType|Device(IsMounted|IsDrive|File) ).*|\}|.*\{)"

This will print out something like this:

node /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices {
  node /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/sda {
    interface org.freedesktop.UDisks.Device {
        readonly s IdLabel = '';
        readonly s IdType = '';
        readonly s IdUsage = '';
        readonly b DeviceIsMounted = false;
        readonly s DeviceFile = '/dev/sda';
    };
  };
  node /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/sda1 {
    interface org.freedesktop.UDisks.Device {
        readonly s IdLabel = 'SYSTEM';
        readonly s IdType = 'ntfs';
        readonly s IdUsage = 'filesystem';
        readonly b DeviceIsMounted = false;
        readonly s DeviceFile = '/dev/sda1';
    };
  };
  node /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/sda2 {
    interface org.freedesktop.UDisks.Device {
        readonly s IdLabel = 'Windows7';
        readonly s IdType = 'ntfs';
        readonly s IdUsage = 'filesystem';
        readonly b DeviceIsMounted = true;
        readonly s DeviceFile = '/dev/sda2';
    };
  };
  node /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/sda3 {
    interface org.freedesktop.UDisks.Device {
        readonly s IdLabel = 'Recovery';
        readonly s IdType = 'ntfs';
        readonly s IdUsage = 'filesystem';
        readonly b DeviceIsMounted = false;
        readonly s DeviceFile = '/dev/sda3';
    };
  };
  node /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/sda4 {
    interface org.freedesktop.UDisks.Device {
        readonly s IdLabel = '';
        readonly s IdType = '';
        readonly s IdUsage = '';
        readonly b DeviceIsMounted = false;
        readonly s DeviceFile = '/dev/sda4';
    };
  };
  node /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/sda5 {
    interface org.freedesktop.UDisks.Device {
        readonly s IdLabel = '';
        readonly s IdType = 'ext4';
        readonly s IdUsage = 'filesystem';
        readonly b DeviceIsMounted = true;
        readonly s DeviceFile = '/dev/sda5';
    };
  };
  node /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/sda6 {
    interface org.freedesktop.UDisks.Device {
        readonly s IdLabel = '';
        readonly s IdType = 'swap';
        readonly s IdUsage = 'other';
        readonly b DeviceIsMounted = false;
        readonly s DeviceFile = '/dev/sda6';
    };
  };
  node /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/sda7 {
    interface org.freedesktop.UDisks.Device {
        readonly s IdLabel = '';
        readonly s IdType = 'ext4';
        readonly s IdUsage = 'filesystem';
        readonly b DeviceIsMounted = true;
        readonly s DeviceFile = '/dev/sda7';
    };
  };
  node /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/sdb {
    interface org.freedesktop.UDisks.Device {
        readonly s IdLabel = '';
        readonly s IdType = '';
        readonly s IdUsage = '';
        readonly b DeviceIsMounted = false;
        readonly s DeviceFile = '/dev/sdb';
    };
  };
  node /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/sdb1 {
    interface org.freedesktop.UDisks.Device {
        readonly s IdLabel = 'USB DRIVE';
        readonly s IdType = 'vfat';
        readonly s IdUsage = 'filesystem';
        readonly b DeviceIsMounted = false;
        readonly s DeviceFile = '/dev/sdb1';
    };
  };
  node /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/sr0 {
    interface org.freedesktop.UDisks.Device {
        readonly s IdLabel = '';
        readonly s IdType = '';
        readonly s IdUsage = '';
        readonly b DeviceIsMounted = false;
        readonly s DeviceFile = '/dev/sr0';
    };
  };
};

Those that have IdUsage = 'filesystem' may be mounted using the above command.

This means that, for example, if i wanted to mount the device 'USB DRIVE' i would run the command

gdbus call --system --dest org.freedesktop.UDisks --object-path /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/sdb1 --method org.freedesktop.UDisks.Device.FilesystemMount "vfat" []

---

These commands all work using the dbus messaging system, the same way that Nautilus and other file managers auto-mount things. In these commands we are sending various objects (i.e. /org/freedesktop/... messages asking them to mount and unmount certain devices. They might or might not do this depending on the permissions one has been given in PolicyKit.

Using similar commands one can control almost every aspect of ones experience in Ubuntu and simulate most system programs and functions (i.e. shutdown, volume change, etc.).