List USB Devices Linux Command Line

list_devices.md

How to list USB devices on linux command line

The following Gist describes the use of different commands to list all USB devices. Feel free to comment and contribute.

Table of Contents

1. DF Command
2. PARTED Command
3. FDISK Command
4. LSBLK Command
5. FINDMNT Command
6. LSUSB Command

1. First option - DF Command

What you probably are looking for is the df command. This command (which reports the file system disk space usage) can be used along with grep to only print the lines that match the patterns we require, in our case, media. As no file name is given, it will look for mounted file systems so if your USB is encrypted and not already mounted it won't be displayed.

df -Th | grep media

Where the output is:

device name                                     mounted on
/dev/sda       ext2       58G   52M   55G   1% /media/user/device

Option	Description
-T	Print file system type
-h	Human readable (print sizes in powers of 1024)
-H	Print sizes in powers of 1000

2. Second option - PARTED Command

In this case we are going to list the USB devices using a partition manipulation program. This command is named parted and requires superuser (root) privileges.

sudo parted -l

Where the output is:

Model: Vendors model (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 62,9GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: loop
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start  End     Size    File system  Flags
 1      0,00B  62,9GB  62,9GB  ext2


Model: Your computer (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 256GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    File system     Name                  Flags
 1      1049kB  538MB   537MB   fat32           EFI System Partition  boot
 2      538MB   2685MB  2147MB  linux-swap(v1)                        swap
 3      2685MB  4833MB  2147MB  zfs
 4      4833MB  256GB   251GB   zfs

Option	Description
-l	Lists partition layout on all block devices
-m	Use it along with -l option to display machine parseable output

3. Third option - FDISK Command

The third option also requires the use of sudo to list the disk partition table with the command fdisk.

sudo fdisk -l | grep /dev/s

Where the output is:

      name
Disk  /dev/sda:     58,61 GiB, 62914560000 bytes, 122880000 sectors

Option	Description
-l	List the partition tables for the specified devices and then exit. If no devices are given, those mentioned in /proc/partitions are used

4. Fourth option - LSBLK Command

Here the command lists block devices. The command prints all block devices (except RAM disks) in a tree-like format by default. sudo blkid | grep sd can also be used.

lsblk | grep sd

Where the output is:

sda    8:0    1  58,6G  0 disk /media/user/device

5. Fifth option - FINDMNT Command

findmnt will list all mounted filesystems or search for a filesystem so if your USB is encrypted and not already mounted it won't be shown.

findmnt | grep media

Where the output is:

└─/media/user/device /dev/sda       ext2       rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime

6. Sixth option - LSUSB Command

This option won't tell where the device is mounted or how it is called but list all USB devices and display information about its buses in the system and the devices connected to them. Type only one -v to show less information, two -vv for full information. Once you have identified the bus and dev variables of your USB device, then you could grep them to usb-devices for even more information.

lsusb -tvv

Where the output is:

/:  Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/6p, 5000M
    ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
    /sys/bus/usb/devices/usb2  /dev/bus/usb/002/001
/:  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/12p, 480M
    ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
    /sys/bus/usb/devices/usb1  /dev/bus/usb/001/001
    |__ Port 1: Dev 22, If 0, Class=Mass Storage, Driver=usb-storage, 480M
        ID 0930:6544 Toshiba Corp. TransMemory-Mini / Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 Stick
        /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-1  /dev/bus/usb/001/022
    |__ Port 5: Dev 3, If 3, Class=Video, Driver=uvcvideo, 480M
        ID 05c8:0815 Cheng Uei Precision Industry Co., Ltd (Foxlink) 
        /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-5  /dev/bus/usb/001/003
    |__ Port 5: Dev 3, If 1, Class=Video, Driver=uvcvideo, 480M
        ID 05c8:0815 Cheng Uei Precision Industry Co., Ltd (Foxlink) 
        /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-5  /dev/bus/usb/001/003
    |__ Port 5: Dev 3, If 2, Class=Video, Driver=uvcvideo, 480M
        ID 05c8:0815 Cheng Uei Precision Industry Co., Ltd (Foxlink) 
        /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-5  /dev/bus/usb/001/003
    |__ Port 5: Dev 3, If 0, Class=Video, Driver=uvcvideo, 480M
        ID 05c8:0815 Cheng Uei Precision Industry Co., Ltd (Foxlink) 
        /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-5  /dev/bus/usb/001/003
    |__ Port 7: Dev 5, If 0, Class=Wireless, Driver=btusb, 12M
        ID 8087:0a2b Intel Corp. 
        /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-7  /dev/bus/usb/001/005
    |__ Port 7: Dev 5, If 1, Class=Wireless, Driver=btusb, 12M
        ID 8087:0a2b Intel Corp. 
        /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-7  /dev/bus/usb/001/005

Option	Description
-t	Tells lsusb to dump the physical USB device hierarchy as a tree
-v	Verbose. Tells lsusb to be verbose and display detailed information about the devices shown