Unsafe removal of drives says to "Eject" while context menu says "Unmount"

[Daeng Bo]

Binary package hint: nautilus

The warning message when a drive is removed unsafely says to find the "Eject" entry in the context menu, but none exists. The context menu uses the word "Unmount," which is tech speak and undiscoverable (see bug #28835). The advice given cannot be followed. One or the other needs to be changed. Which one doesn't matter since CDs can't be removed unsafely, so whether to keep the warning message as "Eject" is irrelevant.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Sep 12 20:14:05 2007
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/nautilus
Package: nautilus 1:2.19.91-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcCmdline: nautilus --no-default-window --sm-client-id default2
ProcCwd: /home/danielbo2
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: nautilus
Uname: Linux danielbo-laptop 2.6.22-11-generic #1 SMP Fri Sep 7 05:07:05 GMT 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

[Jacob Torrey (ranok)]

Thanks for your bug report, this is something that might confuse novice users, so thanks for pointing it out.

Sincerely,
Jacob Torrey

[Daeng Bo (daengbo)]

Actually, it WAS brought up by a novice user who had to ask me for
help removing a USB drive. When I told her what to do, she said in the
most sarcastic tone she could muster, "Oh, that's logical! Why the ***
did they name it that?"

[Jacob Torrey (ranok)]

I went through the Nautilus localization for both en_GB and en_CA and changed the msgstr from "_Unmount" to "_Eject" for both under the tree-view. I left the msguid alone, thinking that that would mess things up.
This patch is probably not helpful, but if you have any advice for future reference, I'd be happy to hear it.

Sincerely,
Jacob Torrey

[Jacob Torrey (ranok)]

Here is the GB version

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug. Eject or Unmount are not the same action and the one use depends of the device selected. A CDROM will have "Eject" listed

[Daeng Bo (daengbo)]

I completely understand that, having worked with Linux for ten years, but:
#1) No one else who just started using Ubuntu knows that
#2) The warning that a USB drive was unsafely removed tells the user
to use "Eject" whiile the context menu uses "Unmount." The directions
are impossible to follow. This must be changed. It looks to the casual
user like no one who makes the system actually cares about attention
to detail. Do you want that image?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Nobody is questionning the wording could be better, it's not trivial to change though. The actions are differents and used not only in nautilus, to make the use coherent somewhere should probably note where eject and unmount are used and start a discussing about how that could make easier to understand for users

[Daeng Bo (daengbo)]

How about using neither "Eject" nor "Unmount" and changing the word to
something more general like "Remove" ???

[teledyn (garym-teledyn)]

ahem ... as an "expert" (started off in Yggrasil) I got to this point and froze, clicked bug report and fortunately found this page. To us experts "unmount" means "remove from the mount table" and in previous versions of linux hotplugging, this could prevent all future auto-mounting of the device.

So I was highly reluctant to accept unmount and eject as synonyms, convinced instead that there must be some other place somewhere on the gui where the 'eject' would live. I couldn't find one, so I headed here.

Why not call it what it is: "Sync" -- that's all it does, it just syncs the filesystems, and even non-technical people will understand that it only means to synchronize the device with any in-process transfers. Why hide it behind some inappropriate metaphor? Just because Microsoft does it that way? ;) I think "Sync" with a pop-over message that says "finish all transfers" would not only tell the users what the button does, but also imply an explanation as to why ignoring this step is a really bad idea :)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

when you want to change a DVD you probably don't want to "sync" it though but to use eject

[Daeng Bo (daengbo)]

What's the status on this? The bug is easy to fix. New users remain unable to follow the directions given when unsafely removing a USB drive.

I believe you can only unsafely remove an external drive, not a CD (you must software eject that), so changing the "Unsafe removal, please use eject" to "Unsafe removal, please use unmount" should be sufficient to fix the problem. There's no need to be concerned with what will happen if a use unsafely removes a CD, so you don't need to use the word "eject" anywhere in the warning.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Daeng, you're welcome to submit a patch for it

[Daeng Bo (daengbo)]

Pedro,

Jacob (the assignee) already submitted patches, but it remains unfixed. I'll be happy to get a .po and patch it, too, though.

Looking at lines 5364-5376 of /usr/share/locale-langpack/en_GB/LC_MESSAGES/nautilus.mo, both admonitions to use both "eject" and "unmount" are already there. So what, then ... HAL isn't reporting the correct type of drive or the correctly reported drive isn't referenced to the right message?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

that's not a nautilus issue and the corresponding dialog needs to be update for the gvfs changes

[Daeng Bo (daengbo)]

Well, I guess that's one way to dispose of a bug. So for Hardy, the warning was just removed altogether (probably due to the change to gvfs), the now invalid shortcut in Nautilus is visible but unaccessible, and the eight-month-old bug is marked invalid.

It's a new low in bug fixing.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

not sure what you mean, this dialog is not displayed on hardy so what wording do you suggest changing if the bug stays open?

[Daeng Bo (daengbo)]

It's still a bug in 7.10, my friend.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

right, but it's not important enough to justify a stable update and changing the wording would break all the translations there

[Daeng Bo (daengbo)]

So giving the wrong directions isn't important enough to update? Heads up -- the translations are already broken because they don't jibe, either.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

this bug got only one duplicate in the gutsy cycle which means there is not a lot of user demand for the change, it doesn't qualify for a stable upload for the moment no

[Daeng Bo (daengbo)]

OK. After sticking with Ubuntu since 4.10, this lack of interest has driven me to Debian so I won't care what you fix after tomorrow.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

alright, you are free to use any distribution you want and maybe debian will fix this issue for you