Version: (using KDE 4.2.1) OS: Linux Installed from: RedHat RPMs On copying a file to a new location, the target file size is only updated on hitting F5, but the free space on the device is updated automatically. This happens at least when using command-line to copy to mounted pen drive. I haven't tested every possible combination of copy method and location. Status info should always be consistent. Furthermore, it would be much more user-friendly for file size info to auto-update.
I've just tested this again. This time the file size was indeed updated only on F5, but the free space wasn't updated at all, even after the copy terminated. Repeated invocations of F5 showed no difference. Only on unmounting and re-opening with another Dolphin window was the free space correctly updated.
Once more with feeling. I tested yet again and this time the behaviour went back to the first pattern, i.e. the file sizes (in the detailed view) are not updated spontaneously, but the free space on the device is. Two additional points: the number given for the total used space (lower left edge) doesn't normally update either, except at the moment when a new file is created. The most disturbing aspect of all this is that the behaviour seems to vary from one instance of Dolphin to another.
Thanks Patrick for the report. The free space of a device is updated each 10 seconds, there is no mechanism currently available in KDE to get an update each time the size changes. Regarding the update of the file size in e. g. the details view: This depends on the file system and the setup of your system. In KDE 4.3 some improvements have been done in this regard, so that the details view gets notified about file size changes (see bug 154676). I've set this bug to RESOLVED for KDE 4.3. If the autoupdate of the device size is still an issue, I'd kindly ask to reopen a separate bug-report, which we might assign to solid (but honestly speaking I'm unsure whether there is a mechanism available to get informed about device size changes without polling).
Thanks for the quick response Peter. I did do a search before reporting this but hadn't seen 154676. The discussion there is illuminating. OTOH, Nautilus does do this at least for the first-level directory, which is really the case that matters here (there's no point in updating size info for files the user can't actually see). I look forward to seeing this in 4.3.
One more point: getting the filesystem free space is simply a matter of reading the superblock every time one of the file sizes is going to be updated because of an inotify trigger. The superblock of a mounted filesystem is always in kernel memory so this is not expensive.