Bash script to mount and unmount a BBC Micro:bit

I develop using the BBC Micro:bit (which I’ll call a microbit from now on) using Linux. To get a new hex file on to the microbit, the microbit has to be mounted on to the file system. Which may seem obvious. But the microbit has a habit of unmounting itself after being programmed. Or not mounting when it is plugged in. So I wrote a script to make things easier. Because I can. To be more accurate, I copied a script from Stackoverflow and made a few minor modifications. Don’t pretend this isn’t how you have written a lot of your scripts. Find the code at the bottom of this post. Copy and paste it to a file called microbit_manage.sh. Make the file executable (chmod +x ./microbit_manage.sh) and run using either ‘mount’ or ‘unmount’ as an argument. I’ve got these aliased to ‘mm’ and ‘md’ in my .bashrc.

Example usage:

bill@bill ~ $ microbit\_manage.sh mount

found one MICROBIT, device: /dev/sdb
MICROBIT was unmounted
Mounted /dev/sdb at /media/bill/MICROBIT.

bill@bill ~ $ microbit\_manage.sh unmount

found one MICROBIT, device: /dev/sdb
MICROBIT was mounted
Unmounted /dev/sdb.

Comments and improvements welcome. The script is:

#!/bin/bash
# microbit_mount.sh
# mount and unmount microbit
# modified from https://askubuntu.com/questions/342188/how-to-auto-mount-from-command-line
# v1.0 matt oppenheim October 2017

BASEPATH="/media/$(whoami)/"
MICRO="MICROBIT"

if [ $# -eq 0 ]
then
    echo "no argument supplied, use 'mount' or 'unmount'"
    exit 1
fi

if [ $1 == "--help" ]
then
    echo "mounts or unmounts a BBC micro:bit"
    echo "args: mount - mount the microbit, unmout - unmount the microbit"
fi

# how many MICRO found in udisksctl dump
RESULTS=$(udisksctl dump | grep IdLabel | grep -c -i $MICRO)

case "$RESULTS" in

0 )     echo "no $MICRO found in 'udisksctl dump'"
        exit 0
        ;;

1 )     DEVICELABEL=$(udisksctl dump | grep IdLabel | grep -i $MICRO | cut -d ":" -f 2 | sed 's/^[ \t]*//')
        DEVICE=$(udisksctl dump | grep -i "IdLabel: \+$DEVICELABEL" -B 12 | grep " Device:" | cut -d ":" -f 2 | sed 's/^[ \t]*//')
        DEVICEPATH="$BASEPATH""$DEVICELABEL"
        echo "found one $MICRO, device: $DEVICE"

        if [[ -z $(mount | grep "$DEVICE") ]]
        then
            echo "$DEVICELABEL was unmounted"
            if [ $1 == "mount" ]
            then
                udisksctl mount -b "$DEVICE"
                exit 0
            fi
        else
                echo "$DEVICELABEL was mounted"
                if [ $1 == "unmount" ]
                then
                    udisksctl unmount -b "$DEVICE"
                    exit 0
                fi
        fi
        ;;

* )     echo "more than one $MICRO found"
        ;;

    esac

echo "exiting without doing anything"`

Prior to mounting the microbit, running the command:

gvfs-mount –list

Should return a bunch of stuff, with a block like this in it:

Drive(1): MBED DAPLINK VFS
  Type: GProxyDrive (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)
  Volume(0): MICROBIT
    Type: GProxyVolume (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)

This shows that the microbit is connected, but not mounted or usable by the file system.

After mounting the microbit using the above script, running:

gvfs-mount --list

Should return something like:

Drive(1): MBED DAPLINK VFS
  Type: GProxyDrive (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)
  Volume(0): MICROBIT
    Type: GProxyVolume (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)
    Mount(0): MICROBIT -> file:///media/bill/MICROBIT
      Type: GProxyMount (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)

Showing that the microbit is now mounted