Sys::Filesystem(3) Retrieve list of filesystems and their properties

SYNOPSIS


use strict;
use Sys::Filesystem ();

# Method 1
my $fs = Sys::Filesystem->new();
my @filesystems = $fs->filesystems();
for (@filesystems)
{
printf("%s is a %s filesystem mounted on %s\n",
$fs->mount_point($_),
$fs->format($_),
$fs->device($_)
);
}

# Method 2
my $weird_fs = Sys::Filesystem->new(
fstab => '/etc/weird/vfstab.conf',
mtab => '/etc/active_mounts',
xtab => '/etc/nfs/mounts'
);
my @weird_filesystems = $weird_fs->filesystems();

# Method 3 (nice but naughty)
my @filesystems = Sys::Filesystem->filesystems();

DESCRIPTION

Sys::Filesystem is intended to be a portable interface to list and query filesystem names and their properties. At the time of writing there were only Solaris and Win32 modules available on CPAN to perform this kind of operation. This module hopes to provide a consistent API to list all, mounted, unmounted and special filesystems on a system, and query as many properties as possible with common aliases wherever possible.

INHERITANCE

  Sys::Filesystem
  ISA UNIVERSAL

METHODS

new
Creates a new Sys::Filesystem object. "new" accepts following optional key value pairs to help or force where mount information is gathered from. These values are not otherwise defaulted by the main Sys::Filesystem object, but left to the platform specific helper modules to determine as an exercise of common sense.
canondev
Specify whether device path's shall be resolved when they're a symbolic link.

$Sys::Filesystem::CANONDEV is used when no key "canondev" is passed.

fstab
Specify the full path and filename of the filesystem table (or fstab for short). Not all platforms have such a file and so this option may be ignored on some systems.

$Sys::Filesystem::FSTAB is used when no key "fstab" is passed.

mtab
Specify the full path and filename of the mounted filesystem table (or mtab for short). Not all platforms have such a file and so this option may be ignored on some systems.

$Sys::Filesystem::MTAB is used when no key "mtab" is passed.

xtab
DEPRECIATED Specify the full path and filename of the mounted NFS filesystem table (or xtab for short). This is usually only pertinant to Unix bases systems. Not all helper modules will query NFS mounts as a separate exercise, and therefore this option may be ignored on some systems.

None of the OS plugins use that tunable (anymore?), so it now a warning is raised when it's used. The entire support will be removed not before 2015. Once that happened, using "xtab" will raise an exception.

aliases
Overrides internal aliasing table used to match queries against OS plugin. This should be used only when dealing with closed source platform helper module(s).
supported
Returns true if the operating system is supported by Sys::Filesystem. Unsupported operating systems may get less information, e.g. the mount state couldn't determined or which file system type is special ins't known.

Listing Filesystems

filesystems()
Returns a list of all filesystem. May accept an optional list of key pair values in order to filter/restrict the results which are returned. The restrictions are evaluated to match as much as possible, so asking for regular and special file system (or mounted and special file systems), you'll get all.

For better understanding, please imagine the parameters like: 

  @fslist = $fs->filesystems( mounted => 1, special => 1 );
  # results similar as
  SELECT mountpoint FROM filesystems WHERE mounted = 1 OR special = 1

If you need other selection choices, please take a look at DBD::Sys.

Valid values are as follows:

device => "string"
Returns only filesystems that are mounted using the device of ``string''. For example: 

    my $fdd_filesytem = Sys::Filesystem->filesystems(device => "/dev/fd0");
mounted => 1
Returns only filesystems which can be confirmed as actively mounted. (Filesystems which are mounted).

The mounted_filesystems() method is an alias for this syntax.

unmounted => 1
Returns only filesystems which cannot be confirmed as actively mounted. (Filesystems which are not mounted).

The unmounted_filesystems() method is an alias for this syntax.

special => 1
Returns only filesystems which are regarded as special in some way. A filesystem is marked as special by the operating specific helper module. For example, a tmpfs type filesystem on one operating system might be regarded as a special filesystem, but not on others. Consult the documentation of the operating system specific helper module for further information about your system. (Sys::Filesystem::Linux for Linux or Sys::Filesystem::Solaris for Solaris etc).

This parameter is mutually exclusive to "regular".

The special_filesystems() method is an alias for this syntax.

regular => 1
Returns only fileystems which are not regarded as special. (Normal filesystems).

This parameter is mutually exclusive to "special".

The regular_filesystems() method is an alias for this syntax.

mounted_filesystems()
Returns a list of all filesystems which can be verified as currently being mounted.
unmounted_filesystems()
Returns a list of all filesystems which cannot be verified as currently being mounted.
special_filesystems()
Returns a list of all fileystems which are considered special. This will usually contain meta and swap partitions like /proc and /dev/shm on Linux.
regular_filesystems()
Returns a list of all filesystems which are not considered to be special.

Filesystem Properties

Available filesystem properties and their names vary wildly between platforms. Common aliases have been provided wherever possible. You should check the documentation of the specific platform helper module to list all of the properties which are available for that platform. For example, read the Sys::Filesystem::Linux documentation for a list of all filesystem properties available to query under Linux.
mount_point() or filesystem()
Returns the friendly name of the filesystem. This will usually be the same name as appears in the list returned by the filesystems() method.
mounted()
Returns boolean true if the filesystem is mounted.
label()
Returns the fileystem label.

This functionality may need to be retrofitted to some original OS specific helper modules as of Sys::Filesystem 1.12.

volume()
Returns the volume that the filesystem belongs to or is mounted on.

This functionality may need to be retrofitted to some original OS specific helper modules as of Sys::Filesystem 1.12.

device()
Returns the physical device that the filesystem is connected to.
special()
Returns boolean true if the filesystem type is considered ``special''.
type() or format()
Returns the type of filesystem format. fat32, ntfs, ufs, hpfs, ext3, xfs etc.
options()
Returns the options that the filesystem was mounted with. This may commonly contain information such as read-write, user and group settings and permissions.
mount_order()
Returns the order in which this filesystem should be mounted on boot.
check_order()
Returns the order in which this filesystem should be consistency checked on boot.
check_frequency()
Returns how often this filesystem is checked for consistency.

OS SPECIFIC HELPER MODULES

Dummy

The Dummy module is there to provide a default failover result to the main Sys::Filesystem module if no suitable platform specific module can be found or successfully loaded. This is the last module to be tried, in order of platform, Unix (if not on Win32), and then Dummy.

Unix

The Unix module is intended to provide a ``best guess'' failover result to the main Sys::Filesystem module if no suitable platform specific module can be found, and the platform is not 'MSWin32'.

This module requires additional work to improve it's guestimation abilities.

Darwin

First written by Christian Renz <[email protected]>.

Win32

Provides "mount_point" and "device" of mounted filesystems on Windows.

AIX

Please be aware that the AIX /etc/filesystems file has both a ``type'' and ``vfs'' field. The ``type'' field should not be confused with the filesystem format/type (that is stored in the ``vfs'' field). You may wish to use the ``format'' field when querying for filesystem types, since it is aliased to be more reliable accross different platforms.

Other

Linux, Solaris, Cygwin, FreeBSD, NetBSD, HP-UX.

OS Identifiers

The following list is taken from perlport. Please refer to the original source for the most up to date version. This information should help anyone who wishes to write a helper module for a new platform. Modules should have the same name as ^O in title caps. Thus 'openbsd' becomes 'Openbsd.pm'.

REQUIREMENTS

Sys::Filesystem requires Perl >= 5.6 to run.

TODO

Add support for Tru64, MidnightBSD, Haiku, Minix, DragonflyBSD and OpenBSD. Please contact me if you would like to provide code for these operating systems.

SUPPORT

You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command. 

    perldoc Sys::Filesystem

You can also look for information at:

VERSION

$Id$

AUTHOR

Nicola Worthington <[email protected]> - <http://perlgirl.org.uk>

Jens Rehsack <[email protected]> - <http://www.rehsack.de/>

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

See CREDITS in the distribution tarball.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2004,2005,2006 Nicola Worthington.

Copyright 2008-2014 Jens Rehsack.

This software is licensed under The Apache Software License, Version 2.0.

<http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0>

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