Updated on July 21, 2020 in #linux

Detecting If a Directory Is Mounted or Not (Useful for Backup Scripts)

In this video, we'll use the mountpoint command to check if a directory is mounted and improve a backup script to use it.

A few years ago I wrote a blog post on how to do offline backups with Bash and rsync.

In this video, we’ll use the mountpoint command to make this script better so you don’t accidentally backup your files to the wrong drive due to thinking your external drive is mounted when it’s really not.

# Demo Video

Timestamps

• 0:59 – Getting a list of mounts on your system with mount -l
• 2:06 – Using the mountpoint command to check if a path is mounted
• 2:52 – Adjusting a backup script to check for a mounted backup target

Reference Links

• https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/3-gotchas-with-wsl-2-around-disk-space-memory-usage-and-performance
• https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/automatic-offline-file-backups-with-bash-and-rsync

What are you going to use this command for? Let me know below.