Pop-up of "Failed to eject" regarding a portable USB drive

[Richard Elkins]

Since I upgraded Xubuntu from 17.10 to 18.04, I have consistently experienced USB drive eject failures after requesting an eject. Here is the sequence:

1. Plug in my WD Elements USB drive.
2. I see the automount pop-up message and, yes, the contents are available for all access.
3. I use `grsync` version 1.2.6-1 to backup whatever needs to be backed up.
4. When completed, and I should not need to do this, in a terminal window, I execute `sync; sync; sync`.
5. With thunar, I click on the little triangle for the device which requests an eject.
6. I immediately see the "Writing data to device" pop-up message.
7. I wait 5 minutes. It is still there. I should see it replaced with "It's safe to remove ..." pop-up message.
8. My drive, while still plugged in, tells me that it is idle and in good state (periodic slow blinking white light).
9. Roughly, 30 minutes later, I see a new pop-up message: "Failed to eject ... Timeout was reached". The "Writing data to device" pop-up message is still there as well.
10. The "Failed to ..." pop-up message repeats again after a few more minutes.
11. Finally, I see another pop-up message: "Sorry, Ubuntu 18.04 has experienced an internal error" showing /usr/bin/thunar as the executable path, "crashed with SIGSEGV".

My drive, while still plugged in, continues to tell me that it is still idle and in good state.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: thunar 1.6.15-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-23.25-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-23-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.2
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Jun 28 12:23:19 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-10-13 (258 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" - Alpha amd64 (20170926)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: thunar
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to bionic on 2018-05-18 (40 days ago)