Re: can't unmount usb hd

On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 12:27 PM, Robert Holtzman <holtzm@cox.net> wrote:
> I have a 360 Gb external drive. When I back up my system (that has 3
> linux distros installed) with Clonezilla, the drive appears mounted as 7
> separate disks (/media/disk, /media/disk-1 thru /media/disk-6). That in
> itself is weird but isn't the main problem. The real hangup is that I
> can't unmount any of them. If I run umount as root on them the icon
> will disappear from the desktop but /etc/mtab and "ls /media" both show
> them all as still mounted.
>
> Can anyone give me a hint?

I have a 160GB external USB drive with two partitions. On OpenSUSE
10.3 and Kubuntu 8.04 it gets mounted as /media/disk and
/media/disk-1. I usually interact with it from the GUI. Each distro
behaves a bit differently.

OpenSUSE
When I unmount one of them the file system is closed but a dialog pops
up that it cannot eject the device. But that partition is not mounted
anymore. Then when I unmount the other partition both icons go away
and I unplug it.

Kubuntu
When I unmount one of them the file system is closed and there is no
dialog. The icon remains. Then I unmount the other and it's icon
still remains. If I click the icon to get the menu, the "Mount"
option is visible, indicating to me that it is not mounted. When I
unplug the drive, the icons disappear.

Admittedly I have not looked at mtab during these steps to see when
"true" unmounting has occurred. I am trusting the icons and menus to
tell me it's safe to unplug. So maybe my experience doesn't help you
much. I have not had disk corruption following the above sequences.

Maybe the file system really is unmounted, depending on how Clonezilla
handles the unmount event and subsequent configuration state updates.

Alan
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