Command to show partition scheme

Question

What is the command for looking at the partition scheme of the hard disk on Ubuntu?

I know we can see the partition scheme in Gparted, but how can we run it on command line?

Solution 1

There are many possible ways. These three below should be the most common. The stuff after # on the command lines are comments explaining what each of them does, you don't need to copy them.

lsblk

This is probably the most simple tool to get a quick overview of what partitions exist. Nested structures (e.g. disk > partition > LUKS container > LVM container > volume) are also nicely displayed as a tree. Runs as regular user, no sudo needed.

You get (amongst others) information about device name, size, type and mount point (if mounted). With the option -f it will show file system type, label and UUID.

It's possible to specify a disk, partition or any similar device to only view information about that instead of listing everything.

Examples:

lsblk                     # default info about all devices
lsblk -f                  # file system info about all devices
lsblk /dev/sda1           # default info about the /dev/sda1 partition and its children only
lsblk -f /dev/sdb         # file system info about the /dev/sdb disk and its children only

See man lsblk for more info.

parted

parted is a more powerful command-line tool, similar to its GUI pendant GParted. It can also modify the partitioning layout. Note that this requires elevated privileges (sudo) to run.

It will show you information about your disk hardware (model, type, size, sector size, ...) as well as a detailed partition table including start and end positions, size, type, file system, flags, label, ...

You can either list everything or specify a disk to print details about.

Examples:

sudo parted -l                 # show info about all devices
sudo parted /dev/sda print     # show info about the /dev/sda disk only

See man parted for more info.

fdisk

fdisk is very similar to parted. It is also able to make modifications, requires elevated privileges and shows basically the same information as well.

Examples:

sudo fdisk -l                  # show info about all devices
sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda         # show info about the /dev/sda disk only

See man fdisk for more info.

Solution 2

fdisk

For my two 1 TB disks

sudo fdisk -l # (ell)

gives the following output:

Disk /dev/sda: 931,5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x81fe91a0

Device     Boot      Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *          2048     821247     819200   400M 83 Linux
/dev/sda2           821248 1953525167 1952703920 931,1G  f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5           823296  391028735  390205440 186,1G 83 Linux
/dev/sda6        391030784 1415032831 1024002048 488,3G 83 Linux
/dev/sda7       1415034880 1451898879   36864000  17,6G 82 Linux swap / Solaris


Disk /dev/sdb: 931,5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x81fe91a0

Device     Boot     Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1            2048 1953523711 1953521664 931,5G  5 Extended
/dev/sdb5            4096  629149695  629145600   300G 83 Linux
/dev/sdb6       629151744 1258297343  629145600   300G 83 Linux

---

lsblk

The command

lsblk # apparently no sudo needed

gives

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 931,5G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   400M  0 part 
├─sda2   8:2    0     1K  0 part 
├─sda5   8:5    0 186,1G  0 part /
├─sda6   8:6    0 488,3G  0 part /home
└─sda7   8:7    0  17,6G  0 part [SWAP]
sdb      8:16   0 931,5G  0 disk 
├─sdb1   8:17   0     1K  0 part 
├─sdb5   8:21   0   300G  0 part /mnt/freeA
└─sdb6   8:22   0   300G  0 part /mnt/freeB
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom  

(sr0 is a DVD drive).

Comments

[David Foerster]

Don't forget gdisk, the GPT-equivalent of fdisk!

[wjandrea]

lsblk requires sudo if you want certain info, like volume label and filesystem type.

[Byte Commander]

@WJAndrea Are you sure? I can't confirm your statement on 16.04, for me both lsblk and sudo lsblk (or lsblk -f and sudo lsblk -f) show exactly the same amount of information.

[wjandrea]

Oh yeah, on 16.04 it's not required. I guess it changed since 14.04, which I'm using.