GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 134667
gnome-vfs-daemon blocks unmounting $HOME
Last modified: 2006-12-31 00:15:10 UTC
The gnome-vfs-daemon process remains running for some time after a user logs out. Because gnome-vfs-daemon runs with $HOME as its CWD, its existence will block the unmounting of $HOME. This presents a major problem with automatically mounted/unmounted home directories. Gconfd-2 had a similar problem. Gnome-session now runs gconftool-2 --shutdown to fix this when a user logs out (see bug #97361). A similar technique could be used with gnome-vfs-daemon or I think gnome-vfs-daemon could simply change its CWD to be outside $HOME.
Is it still happening ?
yes, i am still seeing this happen on a system running debian sarge, using GNOME 2.6.2 [sysadmin@mau sysadmin]$ apt-show-versions libgnomevfs2-common libgnomevfs2-common/testing uptodate 2.6.2-2 [sysadmin@mau sysadmin]$ i'm encountering it as pam_mount attempts to unmount the home directory at logout, and gnome-vfs-daemon is holding open $HOME. switching the CWD to / seems like it would resolve this particular problem (though it would indeed cause problems with core dumps). this bug is related to bug #134666 and bug #134668
gnome-vfs-daemon is terminating automatically here. Not sure how many seconds it's still running after logout, but maybe you could sleep for a while before unmounting $HOME?
Can you please try with a newer version of GNOME? Gnome-vfs-daemon has become much more robust since GNOME 2.6.
I no longer unmount my home directory when I log out. So, it is difficult for me to test this. I did add some checks to gdm's PostSession script and everything seems fine now. The gnome-vfs-daemon process does not seem to hold $HOME as its CWD after I log out. However, as I mentioned, my setup is very different from when I originally submitted this bug. I will close this bug. If someone continues to have trouble with this, then they may reopen this bug.