GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 587340
Consistent Volume "Safe to remove" notifications
Last modified: 2016-01-04 09:32:37 UTC
At present when a hard drive partition/USB pendrive/external drive is unmounted , safe removal notification is displayed inconsistently. Before the safe removal notification there is a notification that the "writing data to drive is still going on and to wait". But sometimes this wait notification is skipped since the small write operation was over very quickly. So this leads to the user being presented with ONLY the safe removal notification , thus the user is not notified about delay due to the write operation. But when there is no pending write operation, to delay the unmount, the user is not presented with any notification about safe-removal. This causes confusion in the regular non-technical user/new users to Ubuntu , who usually keep waiting for the safe removal notifications to remove the drive or leads them to double-check the mount status of the drive before removing the drive This confusion can be avoided by presenting the "Safe to remove" notification *at every* unmount. Using the notification daemons.
This would seriously improve ease of use to new and old users. Though the bug mentions Ubuntu, the bug filed at Launchpad does indicate that it is an upstream bug. https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bug/386057 Therefore, I believe it affects other distributions also. I hope that this is fixed soon as it would make using USB sticks a much more comfortable process and cut the uncertainty users face when using devices.
For the record, we only bring up the notification (typically saying "don't remove the drive just yet!") if the unmount process (which includes making sure all that has been synced) takes longer than 0.5 seconds (or something like that). (In reply to comment #0) > This confusion can be avoided by presenting the "Safe to remove" notification > *at every* unmount. Using the notification daemons. I don't think that's a very good idea - and I don't think most people run into these notifications a lot (e.g. they don't write a ton of data and then unmount). Also, bug 579085 is related here - the root cause is that the file copy dialog is dismissed too early.
(In reply to comment #2) > For the record, we only bring up the notification (typically saying "don't > remove the drive just yet!") if the unmount process (which includes making sure > all that has been synced) takes longer than 0.5 seconds (or something like > that). Hmm , I notice the safe to disconnect notifications more. The weirder part is that the "safe to remove" notifications even are shown for internal partitions. I have my media files on a separate partition and when I'm done playing those files , I usually unmount the partition and the safe to remove also arises for for. [I assume this would be a separate bug for the internal partitions] But the same arises when mounting external media drives and unmounting them after playing the files. > > (In reply to comment #0) > > This confusion can be avoided by presenting the "Safe to remove" notification > > *at every* unmount. Using the notification daemons. > > I don't think that's a very good idea - and I don't think most people run into > these notifications a lot (e.g. they don't write a ton of data and then > unmount). > There is no feedback of any sort now. Previously , with gnome-mount there was atleast visual feedback , where the icon changed on unmount. But now there is no feedback in any manner. I usually endup double checking whether the drive did unmount or not. [you might ask , why do you have to check? Well, i want to make sure that the drive did unmount , are the gvfs devs going to guarantee that there will be no data loss when users unplug device accidentally before an unmount? ] also note this question> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-icon-theme/+bug/406377/comments/11 Maybe this is a bad habit of users accustomed from other OS , but there is a significant user base which is so. There must be some confirmation from somewhere! gvfs chooses not to change the icons during unmount, fair enough , but the present system is not ideal. Are there any other ideas being explored? I'm not sure why a notification "External Drive has now been Unmounted" is too bad. gvfs is being developed in a myopic manner. Not trying to be rude here , but the development is rather , "I find this behavior good enough for me , So there is no need to consider others." Any manner where the unmount is more easier to known would be a welcome improvement.
With udisks2 volume monitor is notification shown always already... *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 750267 ***