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I have a Ubuntu server with a external USB hard drive.

I basically just want to run a script whenever the hard drive is plugged in.

What would be the optimal way to achieve this ?

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  • You may want to ask this on superuser.com instead.
    – Josh
    Oct 14, 2009 at 22:50
  • Is this on a server, or a system with a GUI installed?
    – Zoredache
    Oct 14, 2009 at 23:19
  • Server (killing the retarded 15 char minimum by comment)
    – h3.
    Oct 15, 2009 at 2:31

2 Answers 2

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You can add a udev rule for your specific device -- to do this, create a file called /etc/udev/010custom.rules (or something similar; just make sure numerically it is the smallest in the directory). The files contents will be:

BUS="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}="**IDVENDOR**", SYSFS{product}="**PRODUCT**", NAME="usb/%k", SYMLINK="DEVICE"
RUN+="/path/to/your/script"

Replace the bolded keywords with the values for your device from lsusb:

Bus 005 Device 002: ID 0b05:b700 ASUSTek Computer, Inc. Broadcom Bluetooth 2.1

The first bold field above is IDVENDOR, and the second bold field is PRODUCT.

As for DEVICE, you can define this yourself; it will create a /dev/ node which is a symlink to any device that fits the criteria above (so, if you put foobar as the SYMLINK, udev will create a /dev/foobar which is a symlink to your USB device).

Note: I haven't tried this myself as I don't have any removable USB devices, but it should work. If you have any trouble check the udev documentation for rules.

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  • I apologize if my writing is hard to follow; I'm a programmer, not a linguist.
    – Michael Pobega
    Oct 15, 2009 at 0:45
  • Thanks a lot, this should at least put me on the right path ;)
    – h3.
    Oct 15, 2009 at 2:33
  • You may want to note that RUN is meant to be on a newline, separate from BUS-SYMLINK -- ServerFault is just kind of weird with how it handles newlines, so I added a code tag.
    – Michael Pobega
    Oct 15, 2009 at 3:29
  • Oh.. I just added it at the end with a coma and it worked fine. However the script is called as expected .. but more than once. It's called like 15 times. I use the product and the device serial to match the device so I don't understand why.
    – h3.
    Oct 15, 2009 at 12:50
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    the RUN needs to be on the end of the same line; each UDEV rule is one line. the BUS-SYMLINK stuff acts as a filter to select the device that the RUN statement will be executed on. if RUN is on its own line, it'll get added to (and thus run for) every device.
    – quack quixote
    Nov 3, 2009 at 11:27
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It is likely that you'll want to look at udev. Unfortunately, you've just witnessed me exhaust my knowledge of it.

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