[Thunar-dev] Unmount removable devices systemtray app

[Harold Aling]

Alexandre Moreira wrote:
> 2007/2/1, Harold Aling <h.aling at home.nl>:
>   
>>  Dear list,
>>
>>  When I copy something to my USB flash disk, I now have to either type
>> 'sync' in a terminal or right-click a removable device in Thunar and select
>> 'eject'.
>>
>>  Wouldn't it be nice to have a system tray icon present if one or more
>> removable devices have been mounted that has these features:
>>  - Either right or left click shows all mounted removable devices. Clicking
>> them syncs and unmounts that specific drive and gives visual feedback that
>> it's safe to remove the device.
>>  - Produce an error popup (which disappears in X seconds) when a user does
>> not correctly unmount a removable device before removing it (which can lead
>> to data corruption...)
>>  - Default action when clicking the systrayicon: 'sync all buffers to disk'
>>  - ...
>>
>>  Trashbin or feature request in Bugzilla?
>>     
>
> I don't own this kind of device (well, I do, but I hardly use it)  but
> someone told me some time ago that this kind of action was not needed
> because of the write-through cache linux uses in this kind of device
>   
IIRC, "linux" doesn't use write through cache, you can specify what 
cache strategy you want to use on a per-device basis (udev/hal stuff)
> -- you would only need it to stop blinking to take it off, and it
> would be already synced.
>   
I have one flashdisk without a LED and also one PC which only got USB 
ports on the back... A lot of pc's are also hidden under desks...

After copying a large file (~520 MB) to my flashdisk, the disk stops 
blinking ~10 secs after the copy. 'time sync' in a terminal makes the 
stick blink again and gives as output: "real    1m28.523s", so we can 
say the LED is a very bad indicator...
> Is this correct ?
> If so, I don't see much need for that.
>   
see above...
> If not I believe it would be nice to have that kind of option... but
> it seems to be a separate application, doesn't it ?
>   
IMHO this would be a part of Thunar (hence the thunar-dev list). Thunar 
is already a daemon and handles removable devices: a perfect match!

Many users don't know that they must write these buffers to disk either 
through neatly unmounting or the 'sync' command before unplugging the 
device, so a visual warning would be appropriate if they don't...


-H-
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