Ubuntu Manpage: sg_raw - send arbitrary SCSI command to a device

Provided by: sg3-utils_1.42-2ubuntu1.18.04.2_amd64

NAME

       sg_raw - send arbitrary SCSI command to a device

SYNOPSIS

       sg_raw [OPTIONS] DEVICE CDB0 CDB1 ...

DESCRIPTION

       This  utility  sends  an  arbitrary  SCSI command (between 6 and 256 bytes) to the DEVICE.
       There may be no associated data transfer; or data may be read from a file and sent to  the
       DEVICE;  or  data may be received from the DEVICE and then displayed or written to a file.
       If supported by the pass through, bidirectional commands may be sent (i.e. containing both
       data to be sent to the DEVICE and received from the DEVICE).

       The  SCSI  command  may be between 6 and 256 bytes long. Each command byte is specified in
       plain hex format (00..FF) without a prefix or suffix. See EXAMPLES section below.

       The commands pass through a generic  SCSI  interface  which  is  implemented  for  several
       operating systems including Linux, FreeBSD and Windows.

OPTIONS

Arguments to long options are mandatory for short options as well.

-b, --binary
Dump data in binary form, even when writing to stdout.

-h, --help
Display usage information and exit.

-i, --infile=IFILE
Read data from IFILE instead of stdin. This option is ignored if --send is not
specified.

-k, --skip=LEN
Skip the first LEN bytes of the input file or stream. This option is ignored if
--send is not specified.

-n, --nosense
Don't display SCSI Sense information.

-o, --outfile=OFILE
Write data received from the DEVICE to OFILE. The data is written in binary. By
default, data is dumped in hex format to stdout. If OFILE is '-' then data is
dumped in binary to stdout. This option is ignored if --request is not specified.

-r, --request=RLEN
Expect to receive up to RLEN bytes of data from the DEVICE. RLEN may be suffixed
with 'k' to use kilobytes (1024 bytes) instead of bytes. RLEN is decimal unless it
has a leading '0x' or a trailing 'h'.
If RLEN is too small (i.e. either smaller than indicated by the cdb (typically the
"allocation length" field) and/or smaller than the DEVICE tries to send back) then
the HBA driver may complain. Making RLEN larger than required should cause no
problems. Most SCSI "data-in" commands return a data block that contains (in its
early bytes) a length that the DEVICE would "like" to send back if the "allocation
length" field in the cdb is large enough. In practice, the DEVICE will return no
more bytes than indicated in the "allocation length" field of the cdb.

-R, --readonly
Open DEVICE read-only. The default (without this option) is to open it read-write.

-s, --send=SLEN
Read SLEN bytes of data, either from stdin or from a file, and send them to the
DEVICE. In the SCSI transport, SLEN becomes the length (in bytes) of the "data-out"
buffer. SLEN is decimal unless it has a leading '0x' or a trailing 'h'.
It is the responsibility of the user to make sure that the "data-out" length
implied or stated in the cdb matches SLEN. Note that some common SCSI commands such
as WRITE(10) have a "transfer length" field whose units are logical blocks (which
are often 512 bytes long).

-t, --timeout=SEC
Wait up to SEC seconds for command completion (default: 20). Note that if a
command times out the operating system may start by aborting the command and if
that is unsuccessful it may attempt to reset the device.

-v, --verbose
Increase level of verbosity. Can be used multiple times.

-V, --version
Display version and license information and exit.

NOTES

       The sg_inq utility can be used to send an INQUIRY command to a  device  to  determine  its
       peripheral  device  type  (e.g.  '1' for a streaming device (tape drive)) which determines
       which SCSI command sets a device should support (e.g. SPC and  SSC).  The  sg_vpd  utility
       probes the Vital Product Pages of a devices which may contain useful information.

       The  ability to send more than a 16 byte CDB (in some cases 12 byte CDB) may be restricted
       by the pass-through interface, the low level driver or the transport. In the Linux  series
       3  kernels,  the bsg driver can handle longer CDBs, block devices (e.g. /dev/sdc) accessed
       via the SG_IO ioctl cannot handle CDBs longer than 16 bytes, and the sg driver can  handle
       longer CDBs from lk 3.17 .

       The  CDB  command  name  defined  by T10 for the given CDB is shown if the '-vv' option is
       given. The command line syntax still needs to be correct, so /dev/null may be used for the
       DEVICE since the CDB command name decoding is done before the DEVICE is checked.

EXAMPLES

       These examples, apart from the last one, use Linux device names. For suitable device names
       in other supported Operating Systems see the sg3_utils(8) man page.

       sg_raw /dev/scd0 1b 00 00 00 02 00
              Eject the medium in CD drive /dev/scd0.

       sg_raw -r 1k /dev/sg0 12 00 00 00 60 00
              Perform an INQUIRY on /dev/sg0 and dump the response data (up  to  1024  bytes)  to
              stdout.

       sg_raw -s 512 -i i512.bin /dev/sda 3b 02 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00
              Showing  an  example  of  writing  512  bytes  to  a  sector  on a disk is a little
              dangerous. Instead this example will read i512.bin (assumed to be 512  bytes  long)
              and use the SCSI WRITE BUFFER command to send it to the "data" buffer (that is mode
              2). This is a safe operation.

       sg_raw -r 512 -o o512.bin /dev/sda 3c 02 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00
              This will use the SCSI READ BUFFER command to read 512 bytes from the "data" buffer
              (i.e.  mode  2)  then write it to the o512.bin file.  When used in conjunction with
              the previous example, if both commands work then  'cmp  i512.bin  o512.bin'  should
              show a match.

       sg_raw  --infile=urandom.bin --send=512 --request=512 --outfile=out.bin "/dev/bsg/7:0:0:0"
       53 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00
              This is a bidirectional XDWRITEREAD(10) command being sent via a Linux bsg  device.
              Note  that  data is being read from "urandom.bin" and sent to the device (data-out)
              while resulting data (data-in) is placed in  the  "out.bin"  file.  Also  note  the
              length  of  both is 512 bytes which corresponds to the transfer length of 1 (block)
              in the cdb (i.e.  the second last byte).

       sg_raw.exe PhysicalDrive1 a1 0c 0e 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 00 00
              This example is from Windows and shows a ATA STANDBY IMMEDIATE command  being  sent
              to   PhysicalDrive1.   That   ATA   command   is  contained  within  the  SCSI  ATA
              PASS-THROUGH(12) command (see the SAT or  SAT-2  standard  at  http://www.t10.org).
              Notice  that  the STANDBY IMMEDIATE command does not send or receive any additional
              data, however if it fails sense data should be returned and displayed.

EXIT STATUS

       The exit status of sg_raw is 0 when it is successful. Otherwise see the  sg3_utils(8)  man
       page.

AUTHOR

       Written by Ingo van Lil

REPORTING BUGS

       Report bugs to <inguin at gmx dot de>.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright © 2001-2015 Ingo van Lil
       This  software  is distributed under the GPL version 2. There is NO warranty; not even for
       MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.