Bug 212166

Summary: Removable media can be disconnected while file transfers are in progress
Product: [Unmaintained] plasma4 Reporter: Dotan Cohen <kde-2011.08>
Component: widget-devicenotifierAssignee: Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED    
Severity: normal CC: andresbajotierra, mklapetek, wilderkde
Priority: NOR    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Ubuntu   
OS: Unspecified   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Dotan Cohen 2009-10-28 12:14:56 UTC
Version:            (using KDE 4.3.2)
Installed from:    Ubuntu Packages

Removable media can be disconnected while file transfers are in progress. There is no warning to the user. This leads to dataloss.
Comment 1 Dario Andres 2009-10-28 18:15:19 UTC
If you request "unmount" a device while a transfer is being made, it will not tell that the device is being used (bug 204201). However, when the device is unmounted successfully (and that means the file transfer finished) you will get a "tick" icon.
Adding dependency of bug 204201. Thanks
Comment 2 Jacopo De Simoi 2009-12-13 17:53:19 UTC
> Removable media can be disconnected while file transfers are in progress. There
> is no warning to the user. This leads to dataloss.

The situation in 4.3.x should be the following: 

If you try to disconnect, i.e. to unmount a device while it's being used, the unmounting will fail and an error message will pop up which says that "cannot unmount the device". This to me sounds like a big warning. 
Hence I'm confused about what you mean by "can be disconnected"; 

Do you mean that unmounting appears to work even if there is a file transfer going on?

As for bug 204201, it describes a timeout problem, meaning that if an unmount request has not been honoured in ~30 seconds, then it will appear as failed even if it is still working in background.
This is really a problem with HAL which doesn't inform us in any way of what's going on in the device but as far as I understand It doesn't quite fit in this br.
Comment 3 Angelika Schulz 2010-01-06 12:31:41 UTC
Hi there,

I have a strange problem with my own user account that sounds _nearly_ like the problem reported here:

I plug in a usb stick and the device manager will pop up to tell me what I can do. So I open the device with a file manager .. and seconds after I did so the opened folder will be emptied because the device has been unmounted again, even if I started to copy data from the device to the hard disk.

I could see that problem on my own account only, not having any clue which configuration file might interfere here. I ran through several versions of KDE 4, but the problem appeared since using KDE 4.3.3.

At the moment I am using KDE 4.3.4 in combination with OpenSUSE 11.2. I used OpenSUSE 11.1 before having used the following KDE versions: 3.5.10, 4.0.1, 4.2.1, 4.3.3, 4.3.4. It is really hard to find the correct configuration file ... I moved away the .kde4 folder (completely) as well as the .kde folder (completely) but the problem still exists.

Can you give me a clue what might be the problem here? I mean ... I can live with that stick being unmounted as long as I have nothing to do for it ... but I would love to keep it mounted while I am transfering data. :)

Bye and thanks a bundle,
Angie.
Comment 4 Dotan Cohen 2010-01-06 20:24:13 UTC
@Angelika:
You need to ask your question on the KDE forums, not the bug tracker. Thanks.
Comment 5 Angelika Schulz 2010-01-07 08:12:32 UTC
Good Morning @all,

(In reply to comment #4)
> @Angelika:
> You need to ask your question on the KDE forums, not the bug tracker. Thanks.

Well ... sorry for this. I just wanted to tell you as well that I find it quite unusual that the device manager will grant the umounting of the device while data is written on it and / or a file manager tries to access it. 

At home I am using debian with gnome ... and it won't allow me to unmount the device as long as any application is trying to access that device. 

Under KDE I would suppose that should not happen as well. Once I had an Filemanager (konqueror, I think) open _and_ accessed that device with a konsole because I wanted to edit a file ... and the device had been unmounted allthough both applications had access to that device. 

I will check the forums for hints on what to do with my general kde problem ... but I would have loved a hint on why it is possible to remove a device while still accessing it or even writing on it. I am little bit confused here, sorry. :)

Bye and thanks,
Angie.
Comment 6 Dotan Cohen 2010-01-14 22:49:31 UTC
> If you try to disconnect, i.e. to unmount a device while it's being used, the
> unmounting will fail and an error message will pop up which says that "cannot
> unmount the device". This to me sounds like a big warning. 

I can confirm this behaviour in KDE SC 4.4. When the dependency (bug #204201) is resolved, this bug can be closed.
Comment 7 Dotan Cohen 2010-01-14 22:53:17 UTC
Please see related bug #222773.
Comment 8 Martin Klapetek 2011-12-02 14:12:06 UTC
This is no longer possible in recent master (4.8) and at least in 4.7.3 as well. Device notifier won't let you disconnect a device while copy is in progress. It will show a warning, that files from this device are opened in some other application.