2005-01-16 04:39:22

by Greg Stark

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: the umount() saga for regular linux desktop users

William <[email protected]> writes:

> In my opinion, in order for linux to be trully user friendly, "a umount()
> should NEVER fail" (even if the device containing the filesystem is no
> longuer attached to the system). The kernel should do it's best to satisfy
> the umount request and cleanup. Maybe the kernel could try some of the
> following:

What you're asking for is for the umount -f option to be supported. This isn't
a new fangled idea. BSD supported has supported it since sometime in the last
millennium. Seriously, it's pretty basic functionality and really ought to be
supported.

The semantics of umount -f are simpler than you make it sound. It just
unmounts the file system normally and revokes any file descriptors for that
file system. Any further i/o on those file descriptors just gets an error
(EINVAL I expect).

This is one of my biggest pet peeves about Linux.

--
greg