eject(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | EXIT STATUS | NOTES | AUTHORS | SEE ALSO | REPORTING BUGS | AVAILABILITY

EJECT(1)                      User Commands                      EJECT(1)

NAME         top

       eject - eject removable media

       eject [options] device|mountpoint

DESCRIPTION         top

       eject allows removable media (typically a CD-ROM, floppy disk,
       tape, JAZ, ZIP or USB disk) to be ejected under software control.
       The command can also control some multi-disc CD-ROM changers, the
       auto-eject feature supported by some devices, and close the disc
       tray of some CD-ROM drives.

       The device corresponding to device or mountpoint is ejected. If no
       name is specified, the default name /dev/cdrom is used. The device
       may be addressed by device name (e.g., 'sda'), device path (e.g.,
       '/dev/sda'), UUID=uuid or LABEL=label tags.

       There are four different methods of ejecting, depending on whether
       the device is a CD-ROM, SCSI device, removable floppy, or tape. By
       default eject tries all four methods in order until it succeeds.

       If a device partition is specified, the whole-disk device is used.

       If the device or a device partition is currently mounted, it is
       unmounted before ejecting. The eject is processed on exclusive
       open block device file descriptor if --no-unmount or --force are
       not specified.

OPTIONS         top

       -a, --auto on|off
           This option controls the auto-eject mode, supported by some
           devices. When enabled, the drive automatically ejects when the
           device is closed.

       -c, --changerslot slot
           With this option a CD slot can be selected from an ATAPI/IDE
           CD-ROM changer. The CD-ROM drive cannot be in use (mounted
           data CD or playing a music CD) for a change request to work.
           Please also note that the first slot of the changer is
           referred to as 0, not 1.

       -d, --default
           List the default device name.

       -F, --force
           Force eject, don’t check device type, don’t open device with
           exclusive lock. The successful result may be false positive on
           non hot-pluggable devices.

       -f, --floppy
           This option specifies that the drive should be ejected using a
           removable floppy disk eject command.

       -i, --manualeject on|off
           This option controls locking of the hardware eject button.
           When enabled, the drive will not be ejected when the button is
           pressed. This is useful when you are carrying a laptop in a
           bag or case and don’t want it to eject if the button is
           inadvertently pressed.

       -M, --no-partitions-unmount
           The option tells eject to not try to unmount other partitions
           on partitioned devices. If another partition is still mounted,
           the program will not attempt to eject the media. It will
           attempt to unmount only the device or mountpoint given on the
           command line.

       -m, --no-unmount
           The option tells eject to not try to unmount at all. If this
           option is not specified then eject opens the device with
           O_EXCL flag to be sure that the device is not used (since
           v2.35).

       -n, --noop
           With this option the selected device is displayed but no
           action is performed.

       -p, --proc
           This option allows you to use /proc/mounts instead /etc/mtab.
           It also passes the -n option to umount(8).

       -q, --tape
           This option specifies that the drive should be ejected using a
           tape drive offline command.

       -r, --cdrom
           This option specifies that the drive should be ejected using a
           CDROM eject command.

       -s, --scsi
           This option specifies that the drive should be ejected using
           SCSI commands.

       -T, --traytoggle
           With this option the drive is given a CD-ROM tray close
           command if it’s opened, and a CD-ROM tray eject command if
           it’s closed. Not all devices support this command, because it
           uses the above CD-ROM tray close command.

       -t, --trayclose
           With this option the drive is given a CD-ROM tray close
           command. Not all devices support this command.

       -h, --help
           Display help text and exit.

       -V, --version
           Print version and exit.

       -v, --verbose
           Run in verbose mode; more information is displayed about what
           the command is doing.

       -X, --listspeed
           With this option the CD-ROM drive will be probed to detect the
           available speeds. The output is a list of speeds which can be
           used as an argument of the -x option. This only works with
           Linux 2.6.13 or higher, on previous versions solely the
           maximum speed will be reported. Also note that some drives may
           not correctly report the speed and therefore this option does
           not work with them.

       -x, --cdspeed speed
           With this option the drive is given a CD-ROM select speed
           command. The speed argument is a number indicating the desired
           speed (e.g., 8 for 8X speed), or 0 for maximum data rate. Not
           all devices support this command and you can only specify
           speeds that the drive is capable of. Every time the media is
           changed this option is cleared. This option can be used alone,
           or with the -t and -c options.

EXIT STATUS         top

       Returns 0 if operation was successful, 1 if operation failed or
       command syntax was not valid.

NOTES         top

       eject only works with devices that support one or more of the four
       methods of ejecting. This includes most CD-ROM drives (IDE, SCSI,
       and proprietary), some SCSI tape drives, JAZ drives, ZIP drives
       (parallel port, SCSI, and IDE versions), and LS120 removable
       floppies. Users have also reported success with floppy drives on
       Sun SPARC and Apple Macintosh systems. If eject does not work, it
       is most likely a limitation of the kernel driver for the device
       and not the eject program itself.

       The -r, -s, -f, and -q options allow controlling which methods are
       used to eject. More than one method can be specified. If none of
       these options are specified, it tries all four (this works fine in
       most cases).

       eject may not always be able to determine if the device is mounted
       (e.g., if it has several names). If the device name is a symbolic
       link, eject will follow the link and use the device that it points
       to.

       If eject determines that the device can have multiple partitions,
       it will attempt to unmount all mounted partitions of the device
       before ejecting (see also --no-partitions-unmount). If an unmount
       fails, the program will not attempt to eject the media.

       You can eject an audio CD. Some CD-ROM drives will refuse to open
       the tray if the drive is empty. Some devices do not support the
       tray close command.

       If the auto-eject feature is enabled, then the drive will always
       be ejected after running this command. Not all Linux kernel CD-ROM
       drivers support the auto-eject mode. There is no way to find out
       the state of the auto-eject mode.

       You need appropriate privileges to access the device files.
       Running as root is required to eject some devices (e.g., SCSI
       devices).

AUTHORS         top

       Jeff Tranter <tranter@pobox.com> - original author, Karel Zak
       <kzak@redhat.com> and Michal Luscon <mluscon@redhat.com> -
       util-linux version.

SEE ALSO         top

       findmnt(8), lsblk(8), mount(8), umount(8)

REPORTING BUGS         top

       For bug reports, use the issue tracker
       <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>.

AVAILABILITY         top

       The eject command is part of the util-linux package which can be
       downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
       <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>. This page is
       part of the util-linux (a random collection of Linux utilities)
       project. Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩. If you have a
       bug report for this manual page, send it to
       util-linux@vger.kernel.org. This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
       2025-02-02. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
       was found in the repository was 2025-01-30.) If you discover any
       rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
       believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page,
       or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
       COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a
       mail to man-pages@man7.org

util-linux 2.41.devel-938-0a... 2025-01-15                       EJECT(1)