can't unmount usb hd

[Matt Graham]

After a long battle with technology, Robert Holtzman wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Oct 2008, Matt Graham wrote:
>> From: Robert Holtzman <holtzm at cox.net>
>>> linux distros installed) with Clonezilla, the drive appears mounted as 7
>>> separate [partitions] (/media/disk, /media/disk-1 thru /media/disk-6).
>> You have an automounter of some type running.  I *HATE* automounters, and I
>> always turn them off, but YMMV.  Which version of which distro are you
>> running?  Check its docs for how to turn off the automounter, or
> Would an automounter run amok with one usb device and not another? There
> is no problem with my 2 Gb key drive. Also, do you know of a reason the
> problem would appear after some months of functioning correctly?

Check the wonky disk's partition table with fdisk -l.  If the partition table 
is messed up, or if its x86 partition table has been replaced with a *BSD 
partition table, or if one of the x86 partitions has a *BSD partition table 
embedded inside it, you might see strange things.

>>> 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.
>> Automounter again.  The default seems to be that if a filesystem has
>> not been accessed for more than 60 seconds, it will be umounted.
> I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 and there is a package named Tracker that is an
> indexing program. I think it was running at the time but I'm not sure.

Hm.  I'm running Ubuntu Gutsy at work, and it automounts things until you tell 
it not to do that, but I never saw anything odd like what you're seeing.  
Then again, I've only plugged a regular USB drive and an iPod into that 
machine.

-- 
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Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see