Cannot remove flash memory

[Peter Garrett]

On Thu, 30 Nov 2006 10:46:05 +0000
norman <norman at littletank.org> wrote:

> 
> > > I'm not quite sure what the light means, but I ignore it, and haven't 
> > > had any problems whatsoever yet. I'm using gnome as opposed to kde, but 
> > > I doubt that makes any difference. So, I just make sure the device is 
> > > not mounted and then pull it off.
> > 
> > It means the same as the flashing light on the front of most PCs.  The
> > drive is in use. If you remove it when the light is on you may lose or
> > corrupt data.  The whole purpose of the light is to tell you that there
> > the memory is being written to or read from.
> 
> I cannot believe that. It is now 15 minutes since I pressed eject and
> the light is still flashing. Unless, of course, eject is not the same as
> unmount.

Try this sequence ( the device in this case is /dev/sda1 )

                               $ pumount /dev/sda1

Comment: OK, no errors so it is unmounted now...

peter at prospero:~ $ pmount /dev/sda1

Comment: No errors, so now it's mounted again.

So, with the "stick" still plugged in, the system still "knows" it is
there after the "pumount" command , but ...

peter at prospero:~ $ eject /dev/sda1
peter at prospero:~ $ pmount /dev/sda1
Error: device /dev/sda1 does not exist

... after "eject", the system has total amnesia about it ;-)

That's a /highly technical explanation/ of the difference, I know   *grin*

Peter