Using /proc/partitions is probably preferable because any user can read
it, not just people who can be trusted with read access to drives, and
because the format of /proc/partitions is probably simpler and more
stable over time.
That said, what you do is
import commands
fdisk_output = commands.getoutput("fdisk -l %s" % partition)
followed by some specialized code to parse the output of 'fdisk -l'
The following code is not at all tested, but might do the trick.
# python parse_fdisk.py
/dev/hda4 blocks=1060290 bootable=False partition_id_string='Linux swap' partition_id=130 start=8451 end=8582
/dev/hda1 blocks=15634048 bootable=True partition_id_string='HPFS/NTFS' partition_id=7 start=1 end=1947
/dev/hda3 blocks=9213277 bootable=False partition_id_string='W95 FAT32 (LBA)' partition_id=12 start=8583 end=9729
/dev/hda2 blocks=52235347 bootable=False partition_id_string='Linux' partition_id=131 start=1948 end=8450
# This source code is placed in the public domain
def parse_fdisk(fdisk_output):
result = {}
for line in fdisk_output.split("\n"):
if not line.startswith("/"): continue
parts = line.split()
inf = {}
if parts[1] == "*":
inf['bootable'] = True
del parts[1]
else:
inf['bootable'] = False
inf['start'] = int(parts[1])
inf['end'] = int(parts[2])
inf['blocks'] = int(parts[3].rstrip("+"))
inf['partition_id'] = int(parts[4], 16)
inf['partition_id_string'] = " ".join(parts[5:])
result[parts[0]] = inf
return result
def main():
import commands
fdisk_output = commands.getoutput("fdisk -l /dev/hda")
for disk, info in parse_fdisk(fdisk_output).items():
print disk, " ".join(["%s=%r" % i for i in info.items()])
if __name__ == '__main__': main()
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQFCrObVJd01MZaTXX0RAt6FAJ9dDvaJ1L5fxTbvtWCSv7If/eHNaQCdFBcI
fHHR0kcAYQA1Sw5t2BDMMqQ=
=LHbf
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----