Desktop usability: how to unmount devices?

Martin Pitt martin.pitt at canonical.com
Tue Sep 7 15:29:28 CDT 2004


Hi!

On 2004-09-07 19:48 +0100, Scott James Remnant wrote:
> Anything hidden on a right-click is not discoverable, especially to Mac
> users.  Top-level functionality like being able to remove devices needs
> to be more accessible, wherever the icon is.

Right. That's why we are discussing this :-)

> > 3. Just let the user rip out the device; hal will detect this and gvm can
> >    unmount it afterwards. Devices are mounted with 'sync' anyway, so this should
> >    not damage VFAT devices too badly.
> > 
> >    + easiest solution :-)
> > 
> This needs to be supported anyway, I expect our users will just rip USB
> devices out without thinking.

Agreed, but it shouldn't by encouraged; we should provied an obvious
thing to say "I've finished working with this device".

> >    - processes may still access it; forced unmount does not work in this case
> >      and if the user replugs the device, it will appear as another device
> > 
> fuser solves the "force unmount" case, I think I used to use a lazy one
> as well (I'll have to dig my scripts for my watch).

Thanks for the hint with lazy unmounting. I did not know about this.
This cries for an analoguous option in pumount, doesn't it?

> This also gives people an icon they want to get rid of, a good instinct
> to use for unmounting.  Delete and drag-to-trash should be supported to
> unmount ... I click on CD-ROM, Delete, it unmounts and vanishes.

I cannot understand why people are so fond of dragging icons to the
trash? I would be afraid that all files of the device would be
deleted.

Martin

-- 
Martin Pitt                 Debian GNU/Linux Developer
martin at piware.de                      mpitt at debian.org
http://www.piware.de             http://www.debian.org
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