auto umount usb devices?

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Wed, 2005-11-02 at 13:46 -0500, Robert Locke wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-11-02 at 12:58 -0500, Tony Nelson wrote:
> > At 1:14 PM +0000 11/2/05, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> > >Hi,
> > >
> > >how do I configure gnome-volume-manager to auto-umount USB devices when
> > >they're
> > >unplugged?
> > >
> > >I understand that pulling ext2 file systems without umounting is a bad
> > >idea, but it should be feasible with ext3 and vfat file system that
> > >have been mounted synchronously.
> > >
> > >I don't really mind this myself, but I have a hard time explaining my
> > >parents the fine points of (dis)mounting filesystems. I believe
> > >Windows XP handles unplug events automatically.
> > 
> > You want the OS to flush its buffers to the disk after the disk is
> > unplugged?  Uhh, how?

> Never used it, but are we talking about the "sync" or "dirsync" mount
> option here?

	Don't go there...  Don't even think it.

	The sync option was in there for a while and it caused nothing but
headaches on FAT/VFAT USB drives.  As it stands, the sync option causes
the system to viciously beat up on the FAT tables anytime you are
writing to the drive (one write to the FAT and one write to the backup
FAT for each block allocated).  At the very least, it makes it several
times slower (slower even than Windows).  I also had it crap on several
USB drives (literally ended up with burned out blocks due to flash
wear-out that even the wear-leveling failed to deal with) when I wrote a
700Meg file to a 1GB flash drive.  They took the option OUT of the hal
config a few months ago.  Worthy note, someone on the LKML, where I also
complained about the sync option destroying flash drives, suggested that
I blind copy (dd) zeros over the entire flash drive to get it to flaw
out the bad blocks and replace them with its internal spares.  That
worked and the 1GB key has been fine ever since (even though I suspect
that it ends up with a much smaller load-leveling spares list internally
and may still have a shorter life expectancy if I don't treat it gently,
now).

	Mike

> --Rob
> 
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