Nice script. I've been using the following for a while now to eject external drives, CDs, etc.

eject () {
/usr/sbin/disktool -e $(df | grep $1 | awk '{print $1}' | sed 's/\/dev\///')
}

You type 'eject /Volumes/name', and then it ejects.

You can always do it like this from a shell session. ssh into your machine and do it remotely (if you are comfortable turning on remote login)
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder"' -e 'eject <volume name>' -e 'end tell'

These eject scripts -- and the technologies they use -- only eject; the bash script originally posted also mounts. I have a large but whiny Firewire drive I use only for my iTunes library. I like to mount it and dismount it according to whether I'm using it with iTunes or not. There are various little utilities out there for unmounting disks, but I don't think I've seen one that remounts and unmounted one. And I use the shell a lot, so this is perfect for what I want.

In fact, I was stuck for a name when I put this script in a file on my machine: it mounts the volume if unmounted, and unmounts the volume if mounted, so it "toggles" the mount status of the disk, but "toggle" is a bit weak a word here. I tried "switchmount", but too long and "flipmount", but too hokey. Ended up with "switchvol", which is OK, but not great -- suggestions?

Actually, it doesn't really matter what I called it because I made a shell alias whose name was the same as the disk, so now I can mount/unmount my iTunes library disk with just a one-word command.

Thanks for working this out. There are a lot of ways to get at volume information, and it isn't always easy to find what you want in a reasonable form. The approach here is direct (maybe even crude), but it would be difficult to improve on it. I could use Mount Me! (or something like it) to mount my disk and DocJector (or something like) to eject it, which I do sometimes, but when I know which disk I want to mount/unmount, and I switch frequently I'd be just as happy to have a direct shell script.

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--- Mitchell