Ubuntu
kdebase package

"safely remove" isnt safe

Bug #70417 reported by Toby Dickenson on 2006-11-05

This bug report is a duplicate of: Bug #61946: [Edgy Data Loss] umount progress dialog missing. Edit Remove

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	kdebase (Ubuntu)	New	Undecided	Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: kdebase

Using "safely remove" on a usb memory stick causes the desktop icon to disappear immediately, without waiting for any cached writes to complete.

I have observed this behaviour in both edgy and dapper with kde-355, with two different memory sticks.

kde-353 used to show a progress bar while flushing the cached writes. This was still less than ideal because the progress bar stuck at 0% then jumped to 100% once writing was complete, but at least you knew when it was safe to remove the device.

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James (jet57) wrote on 2006-11-08:

I can confirm this is an issue on Kubuntu 6.10. Is there a workaround, such as manually flushing cached writes?

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mokka (mokka) wrote on 2006-11-12:

I can confirm this.

For me "savely remove" worked in Kubuntu Dapper with kde-353 but not anymore in Kubuntu Dapper nor in Edgy with kde-355.

A possible work-around is to "sudo umount" the drive in the console, because there you can be sure that all files have been saved properly, when the cursor is back again.

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Dario Teixeira (darioteixeira) wrote on 2006-11-28:

Confirmed here as well.

This is actually *quite serious* since it can lead to loss of data.

To prevent it, either manually unmount the drive in the console
(umount waits till all the data is flushed) or run "sync" to explicitly
flush the data.

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Dario Teixeira (darioteixeira) wrote on 2006-12-25:

I think I now know what the exact problem is: the device's icon disappears
immediately after the user clicks "Safely remove", leading one to believe
the device has immediately unmounted and can be safely removed. Obviously,
the device is only *really* unmounted after all the changes have been flushed,
which can take some time.

Anyway, I couldn't find any reference to this bug in the KDE's bug database.
Also, I don't remember this bug being present in Dapper. Could it be a kubuntu-specific regression introduced in Edgy?