.
I've had this problem for more than a year but usually it only bothers mefor a moment and I move on. Today it was a bigger annoyance when I was trying to diagnose a problem with a flash drive.
When I mount the device my clicking on mount on the desktop icon that pops up when it is plugged init then takes 2 minutes, I timed it today, to release after clicking on unmount. I would like to reduce that to something reasonable likeimmediately or no more than a few seconds.
This is with xfce and lightdm on Fedora 27, but it has been doing this for several versions of Fedora. I use the flash drive to save audio books, keep reusing the same device and only see the problem when I save a new audio book, perhaps once a week, so I just accept it ...
Any thoughts appreciated,
Bob
On 05/07/2018 02:48 PM, Bob Goodwin wrote:
When I mount the device my clicking on mount on the desktop icon that pops up when it is plugged init then takes 2 minutes, I timed it today, to release after clicking on unmount. I would like to reduce that to something reasonable likeimmediately or no more than a few seconds.
This is with xfce and lightdm on Fedora 27, but it has been doing this for several versions of Fedora. I use the flash drive to save audio books, keep reusing the same device and only see the problem when I save a new audio book, perhaps once a week, so I just accept it ...
If it only happens after you write to it, maybe the drive is slow and the cache flush is taking longer than you expect. Or is the first paragraph meaning that you click unmount immediately after mounting it and it still takes that long? Another possibility is that some process is scanning the drive and holding it open. Although in that case, Nautilus would show a message saying that, but I don't what would happen for you.
On 05/07/18 18:04, Samuel Sieb wrote:
If it only happens after you write to it, maybe the drive is slow and the cache flush is taking longer than you expect. Or is the first paragraph meaning that you click unmount immediately after mounting it and it still takes that long? Another possibility is that some process is scanning the drive and holding it open. Although in that case, Nautilus would show a message saying that, but I don't what would happen for you.
+
I copy the data to the device in a terminal, it takes perhaps 30 seconds, when finished I close that to make the flash drive free and then go to the desktop, click on the unmount and this last time waited ~125 seconds for it to unmount before disconnecting the usb flash drive. Perhaps that is clearer
On Mon, 7 May 2018 18:44:51 -0400 Bob Goodwin wrote:
I copy the data to the device in a terminal, it takes perhaps 30 seconds, when finished I close that to make the flash drive free and then go to the desktop, click on the unmount and this last time waited ~125 seconds for it to unmount before disconnecting the usb flash drive. Perhaps that is clearer
You could try doing a sudo umount manually and see if it takes just as long. If it is quick, then something stoopid is going on in all the gui layers.
On 05/07/2018 03:44 PM, Bob Goodwin wrote:
On 05/07/18 18:04, Samuel Sieb wrote:
If it only happens after you write to it, maybe the drive is slow and the cache flush is taking longer than you expect. Or is the first paragraph meaning that you click unmount immediately after mounting it and it still takes that long? Another possibility is that some process is scanning the drive and holding it open. Although in that case, Nautilus would show a message saying that, but I don't what would happen for you.
I copy the data to the device in a terminal, it takes perhaps 30 seconds, when finished I close that to make the flash drive free and then go to the desktop, click on the unmount and this last time waited ~125 seconds for it to unmount before disconnecting the usb flash drive. Perhaps that is clearer
Then that supports my suggestion. Unless the the flash drive is mounted with the "sync" option, the data is copied into the cache and the copy command exits. The data is being written in the background, but when you want to unmount the drive, it has to wait until all the data is finished writing. To verify this, try running "sync" after doing the copy. That should take the same time to exit and then the unmount should be immediate.
I think removable FAT filesystems used to be mounted with the "sync" option, but it looks like now the default is "flush" instead. This makes sense, as it has nearly the same result, but without having to wait so much if you want to do multiple operations. It does mean that people need to unmount the drive properly instead of yanking it out as soon as the copy finishes which is unfortunately still not as common knowledge as it should be...
On 05/07/18 19:35, Samuel Sieb wrote:
Then that supports my suggestion. Unless the the flash drive is mounted with the "sync" option, the data is copied into the cache and the copy command exits. The data is being written in the background, but when you want to unmount the drive, it has to wait until all the data is finished writing. To verify this, try running "sync" after doing the copy. That should take the same time to exit and then the unmount should be immediate.
+
I should have mentioned, I always type sync before going to the desktop icon and unmount. Before this problem started things worked differently, but it's been a long time, as I said I just put up with it, I expect Fedora 28 will do the same in my system ...
Generally when I am messing with usb drives I have used these 2 commands:
grep Dirty /proc/meminfo (dirty is the amount of write buffers that need to be flushed for all disks, most will usually be the disk that was just copied to)
the second is "vmstat 1" and watch the bi/bo columns as they show reads and writes to the disk subsystem, if it umounts when the writes stop that implies the sync may have returned before it actually did all its work.
On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 6:58 PM, Bob Goodwin bobgoodwin@fastmail.us wrote:
On 05/07/18 19:35, Samuel Sieb wrote:
Then that supports my suggestion. Unless the the flash drive is mounted with the "sync" option, the data is copied into the cache and the copy command exits. The data is being written in the background, but when you want to unmount the drive, it has to wait until all the data is finished writing. To verify this, try running "sync" after doing the copy. That should take the same time to exit and then the unmount should be immediate.
I should have mentioned, I always type sync before going to the desktop icon and unmount. Before this problem started things worked differently, but it's been a long time, as I said I just put up with it, I expect Fedora 28 will do the same in my system ...
-- Bob Goodwin - Zuni, Virginia, USA http://www.qrz.com/db/W2BOD box10 FEDORA-27/64bit LINUX XFCE Fastmail POP3 _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org
On 07May2018 20:23, Roger Heflin rogerheflin@gmail.com wrote:
the second is "vmstat 1" and watch the bi/bo columns as they show reads and writes to the disk subsystem, if it umounts when the writes stop that implies the sync may have returned before it actually did all its work.
Do you actually see this happen? Just asking. Because that would imply that sync doesn't, actaully, do what it is supposed to do.
Cheers, Cameron Simpson cs@cskk.id.au
I don't sync like Bob does, I just watch the io to estimate the copy time of whatever amount I am copying.
On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 8:34 PM, Cameron Simpson cs@cskk.id.au wrote:
On 07May2018 20:23, Roger Heflin rogerheflin@gmail.com wrote:
the second is "vmstat 1" and watch the bi/bo columns as they show reads and writes to the disk subsystem, if it umounts when the writes stop that implies the sync may have returned before it actually did all its work.
Do you actually see this happen? Just asking. Because that would imply that sync doesn't, actaully, do what it is supposed to do.
Cheers, Cameron Simpson cs@cskk.id.au _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org
On 05/07/18 21:23, Roger Heflin wrote:
Generally when I am messing with usb drives I have used these 2 commands:
grep Dirty /proc/meminfo (dirty is the amount of write buffers that need to be flushed for all disks, most will usually be the disk that was just copied to)
the second is "vmstat 1" and watch the bi/bo columns as they show reads and writes to the disk subsystem, if it umounts when the writes stop that implies the sync may have returned before it actually did all its work.
. I connected one of the usb flash drives, a 4G PNY Attache that has an audio book file on it and clicked mount and then unmount on the desktop icon, the usual 2 minute delay to unmount occurred.
Then I tried again and issued the following commands, nothing was being written to the flash memory:
[root@Box10 bobg]# grep Dirty /proc/meminfo Dirty: 324 kB
And vmstat looks the same as when tried earlier without touching the mount/unmount in the desktop icon.
[root@Box10 bobg]# vmstat 1 procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ------cpu----- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st 1 0 0 4397596 84492 1655812 0 0 23 15 205 617 8 1 90 1 0 0 0 0 4390280 84492 1663116 0 0 0 0 448 1887 8 2 90 0 0 0 0 0 4390288 84492 1663076 0 0 0 0 409 1207 7 2 92 0 0 1 0 0 4390280 84492 1663076 0 0 0 0 389 1267 8 1 91 0 0 1 0 0 4390280 84492 1663076 0 0 0 0 385 1170 8 2 90 0 0 1 0 0 4390396 84492 1663076 0 0 0 28 417 1300 7 2 91 0 0 1 0 0 4390264 84500 1663076 0 0 0 12 409 1313 8 2 85 5 0 ^C
I'm not sure what all this is telling me but I will try clearing the flash drive and repeating these commands with an actual write. I clear the flash drive by doing:
# cd /run/media/bobg/PNYFD
# rm -fr *
Then write the audio book file:
$ cd /home/bobg/Downloads/Quirky
$ cp * /run/media/bobg/PNYFD
/Then wait the 30 seconds or so until the write finishes, e.g. the prompt comes back, enter "sync," then exit the /run/media file [I use two work spaces, one su and the other root], then unmount via the desktop icon where I have to wait two minutes for it to finish unmounting before disconnecting the drive./
/I've done this hundreds of times and it always works for me without a hitch except for the delay that became manifest perhaps two years ago ... I added the "sync" step as I had done with sd cards some time ago while trying to ensure that I was doing all I knew, not really knowing if it is effective in this case. It doesn't seem to help./
On Mon, May 07, 2018 at 08:23:53PM -0500, Roger Heflin wrote:
Generally when I am messing with usb drives I have used these 2 commands:
grep Dirty /proc/meminfo (dirty is the amount of write buffers that need to be flushed for all disks, most will usually be the disk that was just copied to)
Thanks for the hint.
watch grep Dirty /proc/meminfo
:)
the second is "vmstat 1" and watch the bi/bo columns as they show reads and writes to the disk subsystem, if it umounts when the writes stop that implies the sync may have returned before it actually did all its work.
seems useful if there's more than one disk to monitor:
watch -dc vmstat -d
definitely my favorite (the colors .. :) would be:
dstat -d -t -C all -f 3
Thanks again, Wolfgang
On Mon, May 07, 2018 at 06:44:51PM -0400, Bob Goodwin wrote:
[ ... ]
I copy the data to the device in a terminal, it takes perhaps 30 seconds, when finished I close that to make the flash drive free and then go to the desktop, click on the unmount and this last time waited ~125 seconds for it to unmount before disconnecting the usb flash drive. Perhaps that is clearer
Seems familiar to me: On Gnome (and probably on other WM's, too?)I had these issues too, at times, IIRC: I tried to umount a USB key, and a Gnome message told me to wait a little, as the device was busy or so - after waiting a while I got the green light from Gnome to remove the device .. seems a hardware thing to me (slow USB? ...)
Cannot verify the issue now: not on Gnome, currently ...
Regards Wolfgang
On 08/05/18 07:48, Bob Goodwin wrote:
.
I've had this problem for more than a year but usually it only bothers mefor a moment and I move on. Today it was a bigger annoyance when I was trying to diagnose a problem with a flash drive.
When I mount the device my clicking on mount on the desktop icon that pops up when it is plugged init then takes 2 minutes, I timed it today, to release after clicking on unmount. I would like to reduce that to something reasonable likeimmediately or no more than a few seconds.
This is with xfce and lightdm on Fedora 27, but it has been doing this for several versions of Fedora. I use the flash drive to save audio books, keep reusing the same device and only see the problem when I save a new audio book, perhaps once a week, so I just accept it ...
Any thoughts appreciated,
In case it helps: I have the same issue where umounting (or ejecting) a USB drive from the "filesystem" GUI takes a very long time. Actually, it seems to kill the WM which then restarts after a while.
This is the case even when very little was written to the drive.
I am of f26, using XFCE.
Bob
On 05/07/2018 03:53 PM, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:
On 08/05/18 07:48, Bob Goodwin wrote:
.
I've had this problem for more than a year but usually it only bothers mefor a moment and I move on. Today it was a bigger annoyance when I was trying to diagnose a problem with a flash drive.
When I mount the device my clicking on mount on the desktop icon that pops up when it is plugged init then takes 2 minutes, I timed it today, to release after clicking on unmount. I would like to reduce that to something reasonable likeimmediately or no more than a few seconds.
This is with xfce and lightdm on Fedora 27, but it has been doing this for several versions of Fedora. I use the flash drive to save audio books, keep reusing the same device and only see the problem when I save a new audio book, perhaps once a week, so I just accept it ...
Any thoughts appreciated,
In case it helps: I have the same issue where umounting (or ejecting) a USB drive from the "filesystem" GUI takes a very long time. Actually, it seems to kill the WM which then restarts after a while.
This is the case even when very little was written to the drive.
I am of f26, using XFCE.
I have seen the same behavior under F27 and F28 using Xfce and USB drives (the desktop freezes until the drive gets ejected--a manual umount as root from the CLI completes immediately).
I don't believe it to be a filesystem or hardware issue--it seems to be something with the desktop and file manager. I had intended to test it with KDE on the same platform but haven't had a chance to get to it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks@alldigital.com - - AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 22643734 Yahoo: origrps2 - - - - The trouble with troubleshooting is that trouble sometimes - - shoots back. - ----------------------------------------------------------------------
On 05/08/2018 09:38 AM, Rick Stevens wrote:
On 05/07/2018 03:53 PM, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:
On 08/05/18 07:48, Bob Goodwin wrote:
.
I've had this problem for more than a year but usually it only bothers mefor a moment and I move on. Today it was a bigger annoyance when I was trying to diagnose a problem with a flash drive.
When I mount the device my clicking on mount on the desktop icon that pops up when it is plugged init then takes 2 minutes, I timed it today, to release after clicking on unmount. I would like to reduce that to something reasonable likeimmediately or no more than a few seconds.
This is with xfce and lightdm on Fedora 27, but it has been doing this for several versions of Fedora. I use the flash drive to save audio books, keep reusing the same device and only see the problem when I save a new audio book, perhaps once a week, so I just accept it ...
Any thoughts appreciated,
In case it helps: I have the same issue where umounting (or ejecting) a USB drive from the "filesystem" GUI takes a very long time. Actually, it seems to kill the WM which then restarts after a while.
This is the case even when very little was written to the drive.
I am of f26, using XFCE.
I have seen the same behavior under F27 and F28 using Xfce and USB drives (the desktop freezes until the drive gets ejected--a manual umount as root from the CLI completes immediately).
I don't believe it to be a filesystem or hardware issue--it seems to be something with the desktop and file manager. I had intended to test it with KDE on the same platform but haven't had a chance to get to it.
Just tested with KDE on the same system (logged out of Xfce and fired up Plasma/KDE) and this issue seems to be isolated to Xfce/Thunar. Ejecting a USB drive under KDE was instaneous. Under Xfce, desktop froze (well, I can switch desktops) after selecting "Unmount" from the desktop.
- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks@alldigital.com -
- AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 22643734 Yahoo: origrps2 -
-The trouble with troubleshooting is that trouble sometimes -shoots back. -
users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org
On 05/08/18 12:38, Rick Stevens wrote:
I have seen the same behavior under F27 and F28 using Xfce and USB drives (the desktop freezes until the drive gets ejected--a manual umount as root from the CLI completes immediately).
"a manual umount as root from the CLI completes immediately)." Sure enough, that works right away! It never occurred to me to try that!
I don't believe it to be a filesystem or hardware issue--it seems to be something with the desktop and file manager. I had intended to test it with KDE on the same platform but haven't had a chance to get to it.
Yes, it's really just an annoyance and I just resigned myself to do something else while it unmounts.
Thanks for the work-around, I'll just do that, in fact that seems as easy as using the icon.
On 05/08/2018 10:04 AM, Bob Goodwin wrote:
On 05/08/18 12:38, Rick Stevens wrote:
I have seen the same behavior under F27 and F28 using Xfce and USB drives (the desktop freezes until the drive gets ejected--a manual umount as root from the CLI completes immediately).
"a manual umount as root from the CLI completes immediately)." Sure enough, that works right away! It never occurred to me to try that!
I don't believe it to be a filesystem or hardware issue--it seems to be something with the desktop and file manager. I had intended to test it with KDE on the same platform but haven't had a chance to get to it.
Yes, it's really just an annoyance and I just resigned myself to do something else while it unmounts.
Thanks for the work-around, I'll just do that, in fact that seems as easy as using the icon.
Glad to help. Yeah, it's sure an annoyance from the GUI standpoint but as I'm a heavy CLI user, it's not a big deal to me (I _always_ have an xterm open somewhere).
I've seen this issue reported to the Xfce group before and they still haven't seemed to fix it. I have no idea why. Perhaps we should sharpen our sticks a bit and poke them a bit more. It's been well over a year. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks@alldigital.com - - AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 22643734 Yahoo: origrps2 - - - - First Law of Work: - - If you can't get it done in the first 24 hours, work nights. - ----------------------------------------------------------------------
On 05/08/18 13:10, Rick Stevens wrote:
I've seen this issue reported to the Xfce group before and they still haven't seemed to fix it. I have no idea why. Perhaps we should sharpen our sticks a bit and poke them a bit more. It's been well over a year.
Yes, it seems the more "improvements" they make the buggier it becomes, I have another in text displayed that's more annoying, But I've been using xfce for so long I just don't consider changing, probably only to find another set of problems.
On 05/08/2018 10:18 AM, Bob Goodwin wrote:
On 05/08/18 13:10, Rick Stevens wrote:
I've seen this issue reported to the Xfce group before and they still haven't seemed to fix it. I have no idea why. Perhaps we should sharpen our sticks a bit and poke them a bit more. It's been well over a year.
Yes, it seems the more "improvements" they make the buggier it becomes, I have another in text displayed that's more annoying, But I've been using xfce for so long I just don't consider changing, probably only to find another set of problems.
I see Sam Varshavchik reported this issue on 2017-07-21 as bug 13729 in Xfce's bugzilla (https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13729) and it was updated by someone else on 2017-08-16.
It's still listed as "New" with no one assigned to work on it. So 10 months after being reported, they've not even accepted it as a bug. Not good. Sheesh! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks@alldigital.com - - AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 22643734 Yahoo: origrps2 - - - - Warning: You are logged into reality as the root user... - ----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
Bob Goodwin -
Cameron Simpson -
Eyal Lebedinsky -
Rick Stevens -
Roger Heflin -
Samuel Sieb -
Tom Horsley -
Wolfgang Pfeiffer