Re: THE LINUX REMOVABLE DEVICE PETITION

[nf <nf2 scheinwelt at>]

On Wed, 2004-06-23 at 13:38, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-06-23 at 00:48, nf wrote:
> > Hi!
> > 
> > I have created a website to point out the main issues with removable
> > devices and unmounting - a place to collect information and to discuss
> > possible solutions.
> > 
> > http://www.scheinwelt.at/~norbertf/petition/
> > 
> > Please help me improving it, add comments and links, discuss it...
> > 
> > Work in progress...
> 
> While I agree with yor view that we should have a notification system
> that doesn't block unmounts I'd like to point that we *do* try to fix
> this issue in nautilus. Whenever something is unmounted using nautilus
> (or any app using gnome-vfs to unmount) the pre_unmount signal is sent
> to all apps using GnomeVFSVolumeMonitor. When nautilus gets this signal,
> it immediately unmonitors any mounts on that device.

>From a pragamatic point of view this is might be the right direction to
solve A.1 - Replacing dnotify won't happen soon. :-(

But i disagree with the layer, where you implement it. This should be
done one layer below Gnome VFS - actually inside FAM. And the
"pre_umount" signal should not go up to Gnome VFS (and nautilus) but
instead get sent to fam - to supend - but not terminate monitoring -
until umount has finished - or failed. Taking A.2 of the petition, it is
OK when umount fails for other reasons than dnotify. For instance
someone copying his favorite mp3 collection ;-). Monitoring needs to
resume in that case - after a "post_umount" signal.

Gnome-VFS is the wrong place for this, because the special umount
command which suspends monitoring needs to become standard for all
desktops. The lightweight ones also. There should be no
GNOME-dependencies. It needs to be tiny and simple - to get widely
adopted.

FAM really needs a control and status API.

Btw, what do you think of a gerneric "libdirmonitoring"-API, which sits
on top of FAM and provides the "smumount" (Suspend monitoring and
umount) function. Such a generic layer could also help to replace FAM
lateron.

A command-line utiltity "smumount" for the CLI and for scripting would
also be handy...

regards,

Norbert