Hi folks.
I'm using a number of USB drives connected to the same server for backup

purposes.  And there will be different backup sets from the server that

need to be kept separated.  So I really need to be able to plug a disk

into a specific USB cable and know that the correct backup set will be

delivered to that particular disk.
My problem is that I need to figure out the device name (sd#) for a

drive that's plugged into a particular usb cable.
I'm using a device/address description as the basis of this.  For

instance, "/dev/usb4 addr 4" corresponds to a particular physical USB

port (I believe).
So far I'm using a script which does the following:

----------

# usbdevs -f /dev/usb4 -d | grep -A 1 "addr 4" | tail -1

    umass1
# dmesg | grep scsibus | grep umass1 | tail -1

scsibus3 at umass1: 2 targets
# dmesg | grep scsibus3 | tail -1

sd2 at scsibus3 targ 1 lun 0:  SCSI2 0/direct

fixed
## Check if it's been detached again..

# dmesg | grep sd2 | tail -1

sd2: 238475MB, 238475 cyl, 64 head, 32 sec, 512 bytes/sec, 488397168 sec

total

---------
At this point, I can check the file system on sd2 and perform the

backup.
This is overly complicated, prone to failure (relies on a circular

buffer) and I'd really like to find a better way to do it.
Can anyone point me to some information that might let me write my own

tool (or modify an existing tool) that will trace a physical USB port to

the name of the device plugged into the port?
Apologies to people who followed an earlier thread about this issue

("http://marc.info/?t=118713340200003&r=1&w=2") I thought I'd give it

another go for people that missed it the first time round.
If I don't get any further this time, I'll give up and post the script

I've written to close both threads.
ciao

dave
---

Dave Edwards