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Safely remove hardware

Started by Goober King Dec 30, 2006 at 8:40 AM 2 replies 1.5k views

Original Post

104

Dec 30, 2006 at 8:40 AM

I'm currently running SuSE 10 which is all in all getting to be fairly nice. When I plug in a flash drive/card reader/MP3 player sort of device it identifies and opens it just fine. The problem is when I want to remove it there is the option to "Safely remove hardware" which doesn't work. Not in the fstab(duh) and I'm not root. The fact that the entry to safely remove it exist makes me worry about just unplugging the thing. The fact that it doesn't work is just kinda cheesy, if it doesn't work yet don't put it there. The question is how safe is it to just unplug these things in linux. I know in XP it is generaly safe to do so but I still like to error on the side of caution with transfering importaint stuff.

hydroo

Dec 30, 2006 at 10:36 AM

umount [directory]
umount [device]

Sometimes (depends) you have to be super user.
You cannot unmount devices while it is working. I have problems with this sometimes too.

Unmounting is important for devices which do not work in sync.

Goober King

Author

104

Goober King

Dec 30, 2006 at 11:12 AM

Quote:
Original post by hydroo
umount [directory]
umount [device]

Sometimes (depends) you have to be super user.
You cannot unmount devices while it is working. I have problems with this sometimes too.

Unmounting is important for devices which do not work in sync.

Well its fairly easy to Ctrl+Alt+F2, login as root, and unmount the thing that way. The issue is mostly that it is annoying and highlights a repeated offence with linux where you have to be root to do reasonable things and are repetedly told not to tool around as root it is not a safe practice. Well at least I can get CDs in and out the disk drive these days without doing all that.

hydroo

Dec 30, 2006 at 11:54 AM

Oh.

in /etc/fstab you can (somehow) tell him to treat a device as "sync". If a device is not in sync it is not safe to plug in it out without unmounting. Some data might still be in a buffer not yet written.
It should be no problem for read only devices/media.

Personally i would still unmount sync devices too. Just because im afraid of anything not normal :X.

Ah I found it:
man mount
/sync

it is option "sync" or "dirsync"

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