udisks man page on ElementaryOS

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UDISKS(8)		     System Administration		     UDISKS(8)

NAME
       udisks - Disk Manager

DESCRIPTION
       udisks provides interfaces to enumerate and perform operations on disks
       and storage devices. Any application (including unprivileged ones) can
       access the udisksd(8) daemon via the name org.freedesktop.UDisks2 on
       the system message bus[1]. In addition to the D-Bus API, a library,
       libudisks2 is also provided. This library can be used from C/C++ and
       any high-level language with GObjectIntrospection[2] support such as
       Javascript and Python. udisks is only indirectly involved in what
       devices and objects are shown in the user interface. See these notes[3]
       for what is shown in GNOME 3.

ACCESS CONTROL
       By default, logged-in users in active log-in sessions are permitted to
       perform operations (for example, mounting, unlocking or modifying) on
       devices attached to the seat their session is on. Access-control is
       fine-grained and based on polkit(8), see the “Authorization Checks”
       chapter in the udisks documentation for more information. Note that the
       x-udisks-auth option can be used in the /etc/fstab and /etc/crypttab
       files to specify that additional authorization is required to mount
       resp. unlock the device (typically requiring the user to authenticate
       as an administrator).

DRIVE CONFIGURATION
       At start-up and when a drive is connected, udisksd(8) will apply
       configuration stored in the file /etc/udisks2/IDENTIFIER.conf where
       IDENTIFIER is the value of the Drive:Id property for the drive. If the
       file changes on disk its new contents will also be applied to the
       drive. Typically, users or administrators will never need to edit drive
       configuration files as they are effectively managed through graphical
       applications such as gnome-disks(1). Manually editing configuration
       files is however supported — the file format is a simple .ini-like
       format (see the Desktop Entry Specification[4] for the exact syntax).
       New groups and keys may be added in the future.

   ATA group
       The ATA group is for settings that apply to drives using the ATA
       command-set. The following keys are supported:

       StandbyTimeout
	   The standby timeout. A value of zero means "timeouts are disabled":
	   the device will not automatically enter standby mode. Values from 1
	   to 240 specify multiples of 5 seconds, yielding timeouts from 5
	   seconds to 20 minutes. Values from 241 to 251 specify from 1 to 11
	   units of 30 minutes, yielding timeouts from 30 minutes to 5.5
	   hours. A value of 252 signifies a timeout of 21 minutes. A value of
	   253 sets a vendor-defined timeout period between 8 and 12 hours,
	   and the value 254 is reserved. 255 is interpreted as 21 minutes
	   plus 15 seconds. Note that some older drives may have very
	   different interpretations of these values. This is similar to the
	   -S option in hdparm(8).

       APMLevel
	   The Advanced Power Management level. A low value means aggressive
	   power management and a high value means better performance.
	   Possible settings range from values 1 through 127 (which permit
	   spin-down), and values 128 through 254 (which do not permit
	   spin-down). The highest degree of power management is attained with
	   a setting of 1, and the highest I/O performance with a setting of
	   254. A value of 255 can be used to disable Advanced Power
	   Management altogether on the drive (not all drives support
	   disabling it, but most do). This is similar to the -B option in
	   hdparm(8).

       AAMLevel
	   The Automatic Acoustic Management level. Most modern harddisk
	   drives have the ability to speed down the head movements to reduce
	   their noise output. The possible values are between 0 and 254. 128
	   is the most quiet (and therefore slowest) setting and 254 the
	   fastest (and loudest). Some drives have only two levels (quiet /
	   fast), while others may have different levels between 128 and 254.
	   At the moment, most drives only support 3 options, off, quiet, and
	   fast. These have been assigned the values 0, 128, and 254 at
	   present, respectively, but integer space has been incorporated for
	   future expansion, should this change. This is similar to the -M
	   option in hdparm(8).

       WriteCacheEnabled
	   A boolean specifying whether to enable or disable the Write Cache.
	   Valid values for this key are “true” and “false”. This is similar
	   to the -W option in hdparm(8). This key was added in 2.1.

DEVICE INFORMATION
       udisks relies on recent versions of udev(7) and the Linux kernel.
       Influential device properties in the udev database include:

       UDISKS_SYSTEM
	   If set, this overrides the value of the HintSystem property.

       UDISKS_IGNORE
	   If set, this overrides the value of the HintIgnore property.

       UDISKS_AUTO
	   If set, this overrides the value of the HintAuto property.

       UDISKS_CAN_POWER_OFF
	   If set, this overrides the value of the CanPowerOff property.

       UDISKS_NAME
	   The name to use for the device when presenting it in an user
	   interface. This corresponds to the HintName property.

       UDISKS_ICON_NAME
	   The icon to use for the device when presenting it in an user
	   interface. If set, the name must adhere to the freedesktop.org icon
	   theme specification[5]. This corresponds to the HintIconName
	   property.

       UDISKS_SYMBOLIC_ICON_NAME
	   The icon to use for the device when presenting it in an user
	   interface using a symbolic icon. If set, the name must adhere to
	   the freedesktop.org icon theme specification[5]. This corresponds
	   to the HintSymbolicIconName property.

       UDISKS_FILESYSTEM_SHARED
	   If set to 1, the filesystem on the device will be mounted in a
	   shared directory (e.g.  /media/VolumeName) instead of a private
	   directory (e.g.  /run/media/$USER/VolumeName) when the
	   Filesystem.Mount() method is handled.

       ID_SEAT
	   The physical seat the device is attached to. If unset or set to the
	   empty string, “seat0” (the first seat) is assumed.

API STABILITY
       udisks guarantees a stable D-Bus API within the same major version and
       this guarantee also extends to the client-side library libudisks2.
       Additionally, several major versions of udisks can be installed and
       operate at the same time although interoperability may be limited - for
       example, a device mounted using the udisks N.x API may require
       additional authorization if attempting to unmount it through the the
       (N-1).x API.

       The udisks developers do not anticipate breaking API but does reserve
       the right to do so and if it happens, promises to bump the major
       version and ensure the new major version of udisks is
       parallel-installable with any older major version. However, note that
       programs, man pages and other artifacts may change name (for example,
       adopt a “2” suffix) to make room for the next major version. Therefore,
       applications can not rely on tools like e.g.  udisksctl(1) to be
       available. Additionally, there is no guarantee that the options,
       command-line switches etc. of command-line tools or similar will remain
       stable.

       Instead, applications should only use the D-Bus API, the libudisks2
       library or tools such as dbus-send(1) or gdbus(1) to interact with
       udisksd(8).

AUDIENCE
       The intended audience of udisks include operating system developers
       working on the higher-level parts of the operating system, for example
       the desktop shell (such as GNOME[6]) and disk management applications
       (e.g. GNOME's Disks[7] application). Software on this level typically
       depend on a specific (major) version of udisks and may even have
       support for previous versions of udisks or alternative interfaces
       performing the same role as udisks.

       While udisks indeed provides a stable API and a clear upgrade path, it
       may not be an appropriate dependency for third party applications. For
       example, if the operating system switches to udisks version N.x and an
       application is still using the udisks (N-1).x API, the application will
       not work unless udisks (N-1).x is installed. While this situation is
       still workable (since both udisks N.x and udisks (N-1).x can be
       installed) it may not be desirable to ask the user to install the old
       version - in fact, the operating system vendor may not even provide a
       packaged version of the old version. Hence, if an application does not
       want to tie itself to a specific version of the operating system, it
       should not use udisks.

       Viable alternatives to udisks are APIs that are guaranteed to be around
       for longer time-frames, including:

       ·   Low-level APIs and commands such as e.g.  sysfs[8], libudev[9],
	   /proc/self/mountinfo[10] and util-linux[11].

       ·   High-level APIs such as GVolumeMonitor[12].

       In particular, for desktop applications it is a much better idea to use
       something like GVolumeMonitor since it will make the application show
       the same devices as the desktop shell (e.g. file manager, file chooser
       and so on) is showing.

AUTHOR
       Written by David Zeuthen <zeuthen@gmail.com> with a lot of help from
       many others.

BUGS
       Please send bug reports to either the distribution bug tracker or the
       upstream bug tracker at
       http://bugs.freedesktop.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=udisks.

SEE ALSO
       udev(7), polkit(8), udisksd(8), udisksctl(1), gnome-disks(1)

NOTES
	1. system message bus
	   http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus

	2. GObjectIntrospection
	   https://live.gnome.org/GObjectIntrospection

	3. notes
	   http://git.gnome.org/browse/gvfs/tree/monitor/udisks2/what-is-shown.txt

	4. Desktop Entry Specification
	   http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec

	5. freedesktop.org icon theme specification
	   http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/icon-theme-spec

	6. GNOME
	   http://www.gnome.org

	7. Disks
	   https://live.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Disks

	8. sysfs
	   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysfs

	9. libudev
	   http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/libudev/

       10. /proc/self/mountinfo
	   http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt

       11. util-linux
	   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Util-linux

       12. GVolumeMonitor
	   http://developer.gnome.org/gio/stable/volume_mon.html

udisks 2.1.3			  March 2013			     UDISKS(8)
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