The New Hotness

Having tired of manually decoding UDEV’s essentially random device names produced for the various USB action cameras and card readers, I put the device UUIDs in /etc/fstab and let the device names fall where they may:

UUID=B40C6DD40C6D9262	/mnt/video	ntfs	noauto,uid=ed 0 0
UUID=0FC4-01AB	/mnt/Fly6	vfat	noauto,nodiratime,uid=ed	0	0
UUID=0000-0001	/mnt/M20	vfat	noauto,nodiratime,uid=ed	0	0
LABEL=AS30V	/mnt/AS30V	exfat	noauto,nodiratime,uid=ed	0	0

You get those by plugging everything in, running blkid, and sorting out the results.

The 64 GB MicroSD card from the Sony AS30V camera uses Microsoft’s proprietary exfat file system, which apparently doesn’t associate a UUID/GUID with the entire device, so you must use a partition label. The Official SD Card Formatter doesn’t (let you) set one, so:

exfatlabel /dev/sdd1 AS30V

It turns out you can include spaces in the partition label, but there’s no way to escape them (that I know of) in /etc/fstab, so being succinct counts for more than being explanatory.

One could name the partition in the Windows device properties pane, which would make sense if one knew it was necessary while the Token Windows Laptop was booted with the card in place.

I think this is easier then trying to persuade UDEV to create known device names based on the USB hardware characteristics, because those will depend on which USB card / device / reader I use. I can force the UUIDs to be whatever I want, because they’re just bits in the disk image.

With all that in place, you plug in All. The. Gadgets. and run the script (as seen below). The general idea is to verify the bulk video drive mounted OK, attempt to mount each memory card and fire off a corresponding rsync copy, wait until they’re all done, tidy the target filenames, then delete all the source files to get ready for the next ride.

Funneling all three copies to a single USB hard drive probably isn’t the smartest thing, but the overall write ticks along at 18 MB/s, which is Good Enough for my simple needs. If the drive thrashes itself to death, I won’t do it again; I expect it won’t fail until well outside the 1 year limited warranty.

If any of the rsync copies fail, then nothing gets deleted. I’m a little queasy about automagically deleting files, but it’s really just video with very little value. Should something horrible happen, I’d do the copies by hand, taking great care to not screw up.

After all, how many pictures like this do we need?

The Bash script as a GitHub Gist:

	UUID=B40C6DD40C6D9262 /mnt/video ntfs noauto,uid=ed 0 0
	UUID=0FC4-01AB /mnt/Fly6 vfat noauto,nodiratime,uid=ed 0 0
	UUID=0000-0001 /mnt/M20 vfat noauto,nodiratime,uid=ed 0 0
	LABEL=AS30V /mnt/AS30V exfat noauto,nodiratime,uid=ed 0 0

view raw fstab hosted with ❤ by GitHub

	#!/bin/bash
	# This uses too many bashisms for dash

	thisdate=$(date –rfc-3339=date)
	echo Date is $thisdate
	date

	# MicroSD / readers / USB drive defined in fstab
	# … with UUID or PARTID as appropriate
	echo Mounting bulk video drive
	sudo mount /mnt/video
	if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
	echo '** Cannot mount video storage drive'
	exit
	fi
	# Show starting space available
	df -h /mnt/video

	#– Sony AS30V
	printf "\n— AS30V\n"
	as30v=/mnt/AS30V
	sudo mount $as30v
	if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
	echo " start AS30V transfer on $as30v"
	mkdir /mnt/video/AS30V/$thisdate
	rsync -ahu –progress –exclude "*THM" $as30v/MP_ROOT/100ANV01/ /mnt/video/AS30V/$thisdate &
	pid1=$!
	echo " PID is $pid1"
	else
	echo " skipping"
	as30v=
	fi

	#– Cycliq Fly6
	printf "\n— Fly6\n"
	fly6=/mnt/Fly6
	sudo mount $fly6
	if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
	echo " start Fly6 transfer on $fly6"
	rsync -ahu –progress $fly6 /mnt/video &
	pid2=$!
	echo " PID is $pid2"
	else
	echo " skipping"
	fly6=
	fi

	#– SJCAM M20
	printf "\n— M20\n"
	m20=/mnt/M20
	sudo mount $m20
	if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
	echo " start M20 transfer on $m20"
	mkdir /mnt/video/M20/$thisdate
	# See if any still images exist to avoid error messages
	n=$( ls $m20/DCIM/Photo/* 2> /dev/null \| wc -l )
	if [ $n -gt 0 ] ; then
	echo " copy M20 photos first"
	rsync -ahu –progress $m20/DCIM/Photo/ /mnt/video/M20/$thisdate
	fi
	rsync -ahu –progress $m20/DCIM/Movie/ /mnt/video/M20/$thisdate &
	pid3=$!
	echo " PID is $pid3"
	else
	echo " skipping"
	m20=
	fi

	printf "\n—– Waiting for all rsync terminations\n"
	rc=0
	for p in $pid1 $pid2 $pid3 ; do
	wait -n
	rc=$(( rc+$? ))
	echo RC so far: $rc
	done
	date

	if [ $rc -eq 0 ] ; then
	echo '—– Final cleanups'
	echo Fix capitalized extensions
	find /mnt/video -name \*AVI -print0 \| xargs -0 rename -v -f 's/AVI/avi/'
	find /mnt/video -name \*MP4 -print0 \| xargs -0 rename -v -f 's/MP4/mp4/'

	if [ "$as30v" ]; then
	echo Remove files on $as30v
	rm $as30v/MP_ROOT/100ANV01/*
	sudo umount $as30v
	fi

	if [ "$fly6" ]; then
	echo Remove files on $fly6
	rm -rf $fly6/DCIM/*
	sudo umount $fly6
	fi

	if [ "$m20" ]; then
	echo Remove files on $m20
	rm $m20/DCIM/Movie/* $m20/DCIM/Photo/*
	sudo umount $m20
	fi

	echo '—– Space remaining on video drive'
	df -h /mnt/video
	sudo umount /mnt/video
	echo Done!
	else
	echo Whoopsie! Total RC: $rc
	fi

view raw savevideo.sh hosted with ❤ by GitHub

The New Hotness

Copying Action Camera Video: Now With UUIDs