Auto-mounting USB storage with udev

Auto-mounting external USB devices can be very handy, especially when using headless (no GUI) servers, or in my case a Raspberry Pi. A simple udev script is all that is needed, and assumed that any external storage device connected via USB will need to be mounted automatically in a sub directory of /media

Simply create a file /etc/udev/rules.d/11-media-by-label-auto-mount.rules with the following:

KERNEL!="sd[a-z][0-9]", GOTO="media_by_label_auto_mount_end"  
# Import FS infos  
IMPORT{program}="/sbin/blkid -o udev -p %N"  
# Get a label if present, otherwise specify one  
ENV{ID_FS_LABEL}!="", ENV{dir_name}="%E{ID_FS_LABEL}"  
ENV{ID_FS_LABEL}=="", ENV{dir_name}="usbhd-%k"  
# Global mount options  
ACTION=="add", ENV{mount_options}="relatime"  
# Filesystem-specific mount options  
ACTION=="add", ENV{ID_FS_TYPE}=="vfat|ntfs", ENV{mount_options}="$env{mount_options},utf8,gid=100,umask=002"  
# Mount the device  
ACTION=="add", RUN+="/bin/mkdir -p /media/%E{dir_name}", RUN+="/bin/mount -o $env{mount_options} /dev/%k /media/%E{dir_name}"  
# Clean up after removal  
ACTION=="remove", ENV{dir_name}!="", RUN+="/bin/umount -l /media/%E{dir_name}", RUN+="/bin/rmdir /media/%E{dir_name}"  
# Exit  
LABEL="media_by_label_auto_mount_end"

Once you have created your script and saved it, reload udev with:

udevadm control --reload-rules

Now, when you connect the USB storage device, udev should automatically create a directory under /media with either the device ID, or device label (if you have assigned one), and mount the device. If you disconnect the device, the drive directory (in /media) will be automatically removed.