"safely remove hardware" totally screws up my hardware card reader

[gionnico]

INDEX
-- INTRODUCTION --
-- HERE THE BUG FOR WHO DOESN'T WANT TO READ EVERYTHING (PART 1) --
-- SECONDARY BUG --
-- HERE THE BUG FOR WHO DOESN'T WANT TO READ EVERYTHING (PART 2) --
-- RAW GUESSING --
-- STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS (even more personal) --

If you only want to know the bug problem, just read PART1 and PART2.
As you can see this is not a normal bug, I used this space to dump my anger.
(it will work when I press the submit button...)

I tried to separate my personal feelings from the bug as much as possible.

My system is ubuntu 10.04 upgraded from 8.04 LTS and is now up-to-date with synaptics.

Good reading!

-- INTRODUCTION --

The recent introduction of the "safely remove hardware" for USB sticks / memory cards / cd roms caused me some bad head-scratching.

As I can see, you have now 2 choices with "media/removable devices": "safely remove" or "eject".

That is IMHO nonsense: eject "usb pen drive"?? safely remove "cd rom"?? or "cd hard drive"??

BEFORE there was umount (right click). Or you could click the eject icon in nautilus: it still was the SAME **** command: umount.
NOW right click on media (nautilus) tell you so **** many options.
And there is still the "eject icon" that you don't know how does actually behave since there are 2 "textual" commands now.

They introduced a "feature" that they knew didn't work and confuse you.
Why the heck?

-- HERE THE BUG FOR WHO DOESN'T WANT TO READ EVERYTHING (PART 1) --

There is one good thing: "safely remove hardware" shuts down my usb drive led.
So i guess it's power-management with aggressive power saving settings.
DOWNSIDE: it doesn't know *HOW TO POWER IT UP AGAIN*.

That's crazy! Totally nonsense: what feature is this? it's a bad bug! (IMHO)

The real problem comes when I use my internal USB CARD READER.
I insert a COMPACT FLASH card. Ok works, well. A yellow led is lit.
Now I want to remove the COMPACT FLASH card.

* If i do so it cant be mounted anymore. *

-- SECONDARY BUG --

AND the device DISAPPEARS from /dev listing!!!
You tell me: why do you care? keep on readin'.

I use to umount from desktop my devices, so to mount them again from console.
NOW I CAN'T. Because if i INSERT the device, DBUS auto mount it. If i umount it DISAPPEAR from dev listing.

* Why make life so hard? It used to be easy. *

I have to shut down X system+dbus now so that when I insert the device nothing tampers with udev.
I can now call fdisk or mkfs or mount! (FINALLY)

That's the ONLY way i have to mount a dev from terminal, a task that i need quite often.

-- HERE THE BUG FOR WHO DOESN'T WANT TO READ EVERYTHING (PART 2) --

Anyways there's a problem. with my COMPACT flash.
If I eject it then the flash HARDWARE DEVICE is shut down, powered down and doesn't work anymore.
If i reboot, STILL DOESNT WORK.
(eject, remove COMPAT FLASH card, shut down, power up, insert COMPACT FLASH card. NO WORK!!)

It only works if I power down the PSU ~10 seconds.

* Ubuntu eject / power save mode is so powerful that my hardware card reader can't wakeup even after reboot!! *
The old ubuntu 8.04 LTS always worked.

Update from base 10.4 to latest-10.4.1.whatever doesn't help.

-- RAW GUESSING --

ACPI *MIGHT* be implemented wrong (i have latest bios), but we've always had to handle buggy hardware implementations in x86.

It should be gnome devs / ubuntu DEVS problems ANYWAYS, since I dont have rare hardware.

More guessings: gnome-2.30? udev? dbus? hald? devicekit-disks? udisks?

-- STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS (even more personal) --

Damn "safely remove hardware"!!
I'm angry because google "gnome 2.30 safely remove hardware safely" heck shows changelogs but NOT 1 WORD OF THIS HUGE CHANGE that made me so angry.
So anger increases.
Not even forums talking of this pops up in the search engine. Why?!
This is a huge problem I cant be the only one to have it!

--

"safely remove hardware" I hate this! looks like windows XP
We've never needed it, why did they add in gnome 2.30?!

--

... I really feel bad for those regressions that always occour ...

--

What gnome module did all this mess so that i can put the blame on them ...

[madill (sciso)]

Hi sorry to hear about your problems :(.
Could you provide the make and model of your computer and card reader please.
As for the system not recognizing the card after it is unmounted my computer does that and it has never occurred to me to be a bug is the system un-mounting the entire card reader device?
 ps. i think unmount just unmounts while safely remove drive waits for any read/write operations to complete before unmount

[gionnico (gionnico)]

It's self-assembled computer.
Asus *P5K SE* SOCKET 775 ATX FSB1333 P35 (ICH9).

The card reader is an internal USB: this exact model
http://www.usbwholesale.com/16%20in1%20card%20reader%20internal.htm

> is the system un-mounting the entire card reader device?
Looks like. What's worse is that it can't mount it again even after shutdown.
You have to manually cut off the energy for few seconds!!
(this may be ACPI-related or USB +5V standby)

> ps. i think unmount just unmounts while safely remove drive waits for any read/write operations to complete before unmount
Well umount is already "safe" and it contains "sync; sync" inside itself already ...

[gionnico (gionnico)]

How can this bug be a duplicate of a bug that was fixed months ago??

I'm using latest 10.04

[h3 (h3)]

@gionnico

Fixed ? Tell that to my dead card reader.

It worked for *months* without any problems, then I did a "safely remove hardware" and now it won't work, even after a reboot.

I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 with the latest update and the bug is still there. I believe there is also another duplicate:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gvfs/+bug/504440?comments=all

I propose to rename the button "safely remove hardware" to "make hardware unusable", since it's basically what it does.