blkinfo - Block Devices Information

Library

About

blkinfo is a python library to list information about all available or the specified block devices.

It bases on lsblk command line tool, provided by util-linux, in addition, it collects information about block devices, using /sys/block, /sys/devices, /proc directories.

The main goal is to provide Python's binding to lsblk. Old versions of lsblk, provided by util-linux-2.23.2 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and Centos 7 (and earlier versions) do not contain an option to output to JSON format.

Additional features to lsblk:

• information about iSCSI target IP address and port number was added
• block device usage statistics

Installation

Install python's package from PyPI repository using pip util (default is Python 3):

pip install blkinfo

pip2 install blkinfo

Install rpm package from Copr (experimental).

dnf copr enable galt/blkinfo

dnf install python2-blkinfo

dnf install python3-blkinfo

Usage example

Information about all available block devices:

import json
from blkinfo import BlkDiskInfo

myblkd = BlkDiskInfo()
all_my_disks = myblkd.get_disks()
json_output = json.dumps(all_my_disks)
print(json_output)

Passing filters as an argument to the get_disks() method:

import json
from blkinfo import BlkDiskInfo

myblkd = BlkDiskInfo()
filters = {
   'tran': 'iscsi'
}

my_filtered_disks = myblkd.get_disks(filters)
json_output = json.dumps(my_filtered_disks)
print(json_output)

Filters

• name: device name
• name_glob: globex for a device name
• kname: internal kernel device name
• size: size of the device
• min_size: min size for a device
• max_size: max size for a device
• maj:min major and minor device numbers
• ra: read-ahead device (e.g. type)
• ro: read-only device
• rm: removable device
• hotplug: removable or hotplug device (usb, pcmcia, ...)
• model: device identifier, including vendor name
• serial: disk serial number
• state: state of the device
• hctl: string with 'Host:Channel:Target:Lun' string (for SCSI)
• rota: rotational device
• tran: device transport type
• iscsi_target_ip: used together with 'tran': 'iscsi'
• iscsi_target_port: used together with 'tran': 'iscsi'
• is_mounted: does a disk have mounted partition

Roadmap

1. Now blkinfo library is using lsblk command line tool directly. The good idea is to create lsblk core library in C and just add bindings in Python. https://github.com/karelzak/util-linux/issues/839

NOTE:

If you have got a question or suggestion, please, file an issue on GitHub or submit a PR. https://github.com/grinrag/blkinfo