Unmounted USB storage still shown in Computer devices but cannot be accessed

[f3a97]

Binary package hint: nautilus

Hi,
  I noticed that karmic's nautilus has a weird behaviour with USB storage.

Basically:

1) plug a USB storage device into your USB port
2) after a while, nautilus pops up showing the content of the device and the device itself is shown on nautlius left pane (resources)
3) unmount the drive, clicking on the eject button

After this step, the USB device disappear from the nautilus resources, which I might assume is a correct behaviour.

If you go to the computer section, you still see it! If you click on it, nothing happens. This is very misleading, because the user see the USB device but cannot access it.

If you remove the USB device from the USB port, it actually disappear from the Computer section too.

The expected behaviour IMHO should be that:

- either the USB device is not shown anywhere, after the eject
- or the USB device remains visible into the Computer view (as currently happens), but if the user clicks on it, the device gets mounted again

Thanks!

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Dec 29 11:43:50 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: nautilus 1:2.28.1-0ubuntu3
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=it_IT.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-16.53-generic
SourcePackage: nautilus
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-16-generic i686
XsessionErrors:
 (gnome-settings-daemon:1484): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (gnome-settings-daemon:1484): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (nautilus:1525): Eel-CRITICAL **: eel_preferences_get_boolean: assertion `preferences_is_initialized ()' failed
 (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:1545): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed
 (nautilus:1873): Eel-CRITICAL **: eel_preferences_get_boolean: assertion `preferences_is_initialized ()' failed

[Yosef Karo (yos)]

Changed in status --new --> confirmed

-Yos

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

This is caused by the different ways of how devices can re removed. If you see the plugged in device on the desktop you can do the following:
  1. Unmount
This will (as the name says) unmount the disk. The link on the desktop gets removed, but you can still see the disk in 'Places', or the side pane in nautilus to mount it again if you need it.
  2. Eject (This is the problem)
Eject will behave as 'Unmount', but also remove the link in 'Places' and the side pane of nautilus. This is what will be triggered if you click the icon next to a device in the side pane. The problem now is, that it leaves a link in 'computer:///' (the 'Computer' view), which doesn't give the option to mount it again.
  3. Safely Remove Drive
This is the same as 'Eject', but it also removes the link in 'computer:///', so it's basically a fixed version of 'Eject'.

So in the end they should drop 'Eject' in favor of 'Safely Remove Drive' to fix this.

[Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense)]

In October 2009 the merge of the 'Eject' and 'Safely Remove Drive' options was undone by bug report <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=597864> in order to accommodate systems with internal USB devices, as described by bug report <http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24343>.
Until DeviceKit-disks isn't capable of setting the 'can_detach' property to False for internal USB devices -- or a viable alternative has been found -- this merge will not be undone by upstream.

[Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense)]

The status can be set to Triaged now the cause is clear and the discussion for the solution of this bug can begin.