On Sun, 2009-05-10 at 06:36 -0400, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote: > Hi: > > I'm confused as to the actual difference between "Unmount Volume" and > "Eject Volume" for removable media. > > I think I know how they might work: > - Eject Volume would be for media in devices that have an actual eject > action (like CDs and floppies) > - it would first do an unmount and then perform the eject (if > possible - some media eject might not > be under software control) > - Unmount Volume would be for other sorts of media > > However this does not appear to be what is happening. > > First, there is the warning in the Nautilus user documentation > http://library.gnome.org/users/user-guide/stable/gosnautilus-464.html.en > in "To Eject Media" that says > > You must unmount removable media before ejecting. Do not remove a USB > flash drive before you unmount the flash drive. If you do not unmount > the media first you might lose data. > > Second, the "Eject Volume" entry seems to show up almost at random. It > shows up for some of my USB keys, but not others; it shows up for a > PCMCIA to CF adapter. > > Does anyone know what the situation is supposed to be? Is it that > Nautilus just picks up on some property of the media provided by some > underlying layer? > I can't really address your questions here, however for some things (like an iPod) that you cannot physically unmount programmatically, you still want to have the two alternatives. The unmount will make the filesystem unavailable and cause data to be written, while the ipod can still be seen as attached to the system, (/dev/sd? is still there) and you can still re-initialize it by clicking the icon. At this point my version will also keep charging. If I instead eject it (commandline eject /dev/sd? will also work) it will disappear from the system, the ipod itself will say "It is now safe to remove the device" and it will then spin down, turn off, and stop charging. The latter is a very important thing and I'd be seriously annoyed if the two were merged (even if it seems to be the most "safe" for a user) as I do like the distinction. Unprivileged users: aka those who do not have access to my files and shouldn't access the files on the ipod do not get to mount it, and can't snoop in my stuff even when they borrow the computer. unmount is a good thing there. (if you remember.) What I wonder though is, does nautilus automatically unmount volumes when you log out? //Spid
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