Safely remove drive is not safe for SD card readers

[Jonathan Marsden]

Binary package hint: nautilus

RELEASE OF UBUNTU:

  Description: Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS
  Release: 10.04

VERSION OF PACKAGE:

  nautilus:
  Installed: 1:2.30.1-0ubuntu1.1
  Candidate: 1:2.30.1-0ubuntu1.1
  Version table:
 *** 1:2.30.1-0ubuntu1.1 0
        500 http://mirrors.us.kernel.org/ubuntu/ lucid-updates/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1:2.30.0-0ubuntu4 0
        500 http://mirrors.us.kernel.org/ubuntu/ lucid/main Packages

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:

 (1) Insert SD card
 (2) In nautilus, right click on the card and click on "Safely remove drive".
 (3) Remove and then re-insert SD card.

WHAT I EXPECTED TO HAPPEN:

  SD card should be prepared for removal, but inserting it or another SD card after that should work.

WHAT HAPPENED INSTEAD:

  SD card reader is left powered down and not on the USB bus, so new SDcard insertions are not seen by the system at all.

DESCRIPTION:

USB connected SD card readers and similar devices appear to the OS as being "external" or "removable" devices. This causes Nautilus to provide a right-click context menu item currently named "Safely remove drive".

Using that item triggers a call to DriveDetatch() which powers down the device and removes it from the USB bus. At this point, there is no way to use the device again until a reboot.

Attempts to handle this at lower technical kernel/gvfs layers have been only partially successful, in that users continue to follow Windows-derived "right-click, Safely remove" UI actions and so accidentally disable their devices.

Since clearly, in this situation, clicking on "Safely remove drive" is not at all safe (!), it would seem appropriate to rename this menu item to something less likely to be used accidentally by novice users who expect it to be safe.

SUGGESTED WORDING CHANGE:

One possible wording might be "Power down external device". This is unlikely to be mentally associated with the Windows "Safely remove" wording, and also makes it clear that this is intended for use with an *external* device, so hopefully fewer users will try it on a device that is in fact internal to their machine.

HISTORY:

This new bug report was triggered by discussion in bug #504440 and created at the suggestion of David Tombs.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: nautilus 1:2.30.1-0ubuntu1.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-27.49-generic 2.6.32.26+drm33.12
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-27-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Jan 22 14:35:28 2011
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: nautilus

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

Marking Confirmed/Wishlist -- this is a good suggestion, and would alleviate the misunderstanding on "safely remove...". Needs upstream check for similar bug.

[Marcel Stimberg (marcelstimberg)]

I did not find an upstream bug about the issue, but the wording "safely remove..." has been mentioned in the discussion that lead to the removal of the unmount option for drives already having eject and savely remove:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=598690#c8

[David Tombs (dgtombs)]

Thanks, Jonathan. Hopefully this will go somewhere now. :)

[Anakin Starkiller (sunrider)]

Does this bug still occurs with a newer kernel ?

[Jonathan Marsden (jmarsden)]

@Anakin Starkiller: I tested with the latest available kernel for Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS. This is a supported release until April 2013 according to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases .

(1) How would a newer kernel know that a device is lying about whether it is removable or not?

(2) Is there reason to believe it is fixed in 2.6.32-28-generic ?

(3) Are you aware of a newer kernel I should be using with this release of Ubuntu, that may solve this issue?

I'm not eager to upgrade a stable working machine just to test this, but I'm interested to know where any such "newer kernel" might be found.

Thanks.

[saidimu apale (saidimu)]

The issue is still there in kernel 2.6.35-26-generic, Ubuntu 10.10 (maverick)

saidimu

[Anakin Starkiller (sunrider)]

What about using "eject" instead of "safely remove..." ?

[saidimu apale (saidimu)]

AFAIK, "eject" has always worked (as per bug #504440) and still does.

This bug is meant to address the confusing UI issues, since the underlying technical issues can't/won't be fixed (bug #504440).

[joopbraak (joopbraak)]

This bug has nothing to do with any kernel version whatsoever.

[steubens (steubens)]

it's very easy to tell udev this, but you have to do it manually; i do the same to tell it what format the card reader can read, you'd need some list of major/minor versions and what they are to do this automatically, at least that's the conclusion i came to when i tried to figure out how to automate it

the key word here is udev though, that is where the properties are assigned

[steubens (steubens)]

specifically, http://hal.freedesktop.org/docs/udisks/udisks.7.html

setting ID_DRIVE_DETACHABLE to 0
and all the properties for ID_DRIVE_FLASH_SD (and friends)

a helper could probably be put together like the other helpers in udev to do this automatically based on the vendor, and detecting the media format

[Ahmed Shams (ashams)]

Confirmed in One Hundred Paper Cuts.

[hexafraction (rarkenin)]

On Windows, the safely remove functionality has similar effects to this bug.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

is that still an issue?

[Eddie Dunn (eddie-dunn)]

Yes, I still have this problem on Ubuntu 12.04.

Highly annoying.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The issue has been fixed in newer versions

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Closing Papercuts task as all other tasks showing fixed.