tickling gam_server to make it let go of a file?

Magnus Therning magnus at therning.org
Thu Aug 18 22:33:08 UTC 2005


On Fri, Aug 19, 2005 at 12:46:20AM +1000, Michael Wardle wrote:
>On Thu, 2005-08-18 at 07:52 +0100, Magnus Therning wrote:
>> I use Nautilus to browse a USB disk that's mounted automatically. When I
>> try to unmount the disk I'm told it's in use and can't be unmounted.
>> Using 'lsof' I verify that it's gam_server that's holding a file open on
>> the device...
>> 
>> Now, how do I get gam_server to release the file?
>
>If I remember correctly, Nautilus will unmonitor any files on a mounted
>file system when you try to eject or umount that file system from
>within Nautilus.  Is it possible to "eject" your USB disk from
>Nautilus?

I have still to try that. There are however a two things that confuses
me about your answer:

 1. I thought it was Nautilus that handled the desktop icons. I base
    this on the fact that if I configure Nautilus to not draw the
    desktop (set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop to false) then
    the icons disappear. So why would there be different behaviour when
    going through a Nautilus file browser window compared to using the
    icon?

 2. Usability-wise it's a terrible idea to put an "unmount" option in a
    menu that's so broken that it sometimes is necessary to open the
    file broswer to access a "better unmount". Sounds like something
    that should have been addressed years ago.

>Telling Gamin to unmonitor files will be necessary if it is using the
>DNotify feature of Linux 2.4 and Linux 2.6.  A replacement for this
>called INotify was introduced recently which should remove this problem
>in general.  Until then, Nautilus will need to explicitly support
>unmonitoring a file system before you can unmount it.

A standard Hoary system here, with no special add-ons. I suppose that
means I use DNotify and that I'll have to wait until Breezy for INotify?

/M

-- 
Magnus Therning                    (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
magnus at therning.org
http://therning.org/magnus

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