USB drive unmount

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Thu, 23 Aug 2007, Ian Moore wrote:

>  I've finally installed a USB card into our server which is running 6.06.

Your server doesn't have USB?

>  Tested it and found that sometimes you can unmount a USB stick by
>  right-clicking 'eject' and other times you can't, it gives you an error.

Quoting the error would help.  It may be because nautilus has popped up a
window on one of the other desktops and the filesystem therefore busy and
not unmountable.

>  Okay I shall pin a notice next to the Server saying 
> 
>    "No need to 'stop' your USB stick before removing"
>    "Check USB stick light is not active when unplugging"

I'm not certain, but I wouldn't assume this is okay.  With the notable
exception of the thin client fuse system, Linux doesn't just write
changes immmediately to the USB stick.  If the stick goes idle, chances are
all writes have been flushed and the filesystem is synced, but I wouldn't
presume it.  If it goes wrong, you could lose some or all data on the usb
key.  This is why the umount procedure exists on regular desktops (again,
as opposed to thin clients).  

>  I may be moving away for a year from my current job and so will only be
>  able to provide support for our Edubuntu office computer system remotely
>  either by phone or ssh.
> 
>  So an intuitive easy to use GUI and a package of programs which work
>  well together is quite important if normal Windows users are to be
>  attracted to Linux on a long term basis.  Makes the admin job easier
>  too.

If you can afford to upgrade to feisty you get USB key support on thin
clients directly and users can indeed pull them once they're idle.  I would
have guessed that was a step forward.  I think feisty should be supported
with security patches for the entire duration of gutsy (ie until 04/2008
and gutsy should be supported until 10/2008).  Perhaps that's too quick a
release cycle for you though.

Gavin