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✅ Solution
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partitioning
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Link:
🔍 See Original Answer on Ask Ubuntu ⧉ 🔗
URL:
https://askubuntu.com/q/1392599
Title:
How to change `lsblk` sort order?
ID:
/2022/02/12/How-to-change-_lsblk_-sort-order_
Created:
February 12, 2022
Upload:
October 19, 2025
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I ended up writing a generic sorting function to solve the problem.
New lsblk sort order
$ lsdrv | sblk
NAME FSTYPE LABEL MOUNTPOINT SIZE MODEL
nvme0n1 477G Samsung SSD 960 PRO 512GB
├─nvme0n1p1 ntfs 450M
├─nvme0n1p2 vfat /boot/efi 99M
├─nvme0n1p3 16M
├─nvme0n1p4 ntfs NVMe_Win10 /mnt/c 363.2G
├─nvme0n1p5 ntfs 859M
├─nvme0n1p6 ext4 New_Ubuntu_16.04 / 45.1G
├─nvme0n1p7 ext4 Old_Ubuntu_16.04 /mnt/old 23.1G
├─nvme0n1p8 ntfs Shared_WSL+Linux /mnt/e 9G
├─nvme0n1p9 swap [SWAP] 7.9G
└─nvme0n1p10 ext4 Ubuntu_18.04 /mnt/clone 27.2G
mmcblk0 119.1G
└─mmcblk0p1 vfat SANDISK128 /media/rick/SANDISK128 119.1G
sr0 1024M DVD+/-RW DW316
sda 931.5G HGST HTS721010A9
├─sda1 vfat ESP 500M
├─sda2 128M
├─sda3 ntfs HGST_Win10 /mnt/d 919G
├─sda4 ntfs WINRETOOLS 450M
└─sda5 ntfs Image 11.4G
Bash script to sort lsblk output
It took a couple hours of googling different bash commands to make a solution. The bash script, initially called sblk, can be adapted for other purposes:
#!/bin/bash
# Ask Ubuntu: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1392560/how-to-change-lsblk-sort-order
oIFS="$IFS" # Save IFS
IFS='|' # Use "|" as array delimiter
declare -a partiions=() # Partitions array for a given drive
add_part () {
line="$1" # Confusing parameter $1 becomes obvious
part=${line%% *} # get partition name, then get number
key=$(echo "$part" | grep -Eo '[0-9]+$')
# If length of number is less than 2, prepend "0"
if [[ "${#key}" < 2 ]]; then
key="0$key" # Prepend "0" to single digit
fi
line="${line:2}" # Strip out tree character
partitions+=( "$key$line" ) # Old line "├─..." now array entry "99..."
}
sort_parts () {
# Sort partitions array with sort key into new "sorted" array
read -r -d '' -a sorted < <(
echo "${partitions[*]}" | tr "|" "\n" | sort | tr "\n" "|" )
last_i=$(( ${#sorted[@]} - 1 )) # Last 0-based index in sorted array
for ((i=0; i <= $last_i; i++)); do
line="${sorted[i]}" # Get array line at 0-based index
line="${line:2}" # Strip out sort key "99"
if [[ $i -lt $last_i ]]; then
echo "├─$line" # Print a line that is not the last line
else
echo "└─$line" # Print last line
fi
done
partitions=() # Empty partitions array for the next drive
}
# Main Loop
while read line
do
first="${line:0:2}"
if [[ "$first" == "├─" || "$first" == "└─" ]]; then
add_part "$line" # Add special line to partitions array
if [[ "$first" == "└─" ]]; then
sort_parts # Last partition. Sort and print array
fi
else
echo "$line" # Simply print a regular line
fi
done < "${1:-/dev/stdin}" # Read from file $1 or from standard input
IFS="$oIFS" # Restore old IFS