Removing Cell Modem

["Stuart D. Gathman" <stuart gathman org>]

We recently purchased a Cricket Cell modem, and it was supported perfectly 
out of the box by NetworkManager on Fedora 12.  Great job!

My question is this: the tiny "manual" that came with the Cricket warns me 
not to remove the modem with deactivating it first using an icon on the 
Windows driver, or "you may damage the device.  What does this mean?  I 
hate it when these products don't give you any real info.

I thought of these interpretations:

1) The only issue is that the flash drive also presented by the Cricket 
may get corrupted if removed without unmounting.

2) The issue is that no packets should be in flight because the USB 
implementation on the Cricket is substandard and can't shutdown properly 
in time on a USB disconnect.

3) The warning only applies when using the Y adapter to connect the modem 
to 2 USB ports (for laptops/netbooks that have insufficient power on a 
single port).  Perhaps the disconnect negotiations don't work quite right 
in that case.

4) The warning is CYA and bogus.

Just in case of (2), I currently shutdown the laptop before disconnecting 
the modem.

Does anyone know what the real issue is?  Does NetworkManager need a 
"safely remove" option like USB storage drives have?

--
	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart bmsi com>
Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flamis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.