RFC: Kernel changes that may affect desktops

[Matthew Garrett]

On Wed, Jul 01, 2009 at 12:31:20AM +0200, Kevin Kofler wrote:

> IMHO DeviceKit should just unmount it itself and notify the desktop that it
> has unmounted the device so the desktop can report it (or ignore it if it
> doesn't know about the event). I don't see why we need to add code to every
> desktop to listen for a "please unmount me" event and send an unmount
> request back when this could just be handled within DeviceKit. Or even
> within the kernel for that matter, do we really need a roundtrip through
> userspace for this? When and why would we ever want to do anything *other*
> than unmounting the device when this event triggers?

Because you might want to warn the user that they have unsaved work that 
will be lost if they continue?

> An additional problem is: what if the unmount fails due to open files? Your
> suggestion to just kill the applications sounds really broken to me. A
> forced unmount at kernel level and failing any attempts to further access
> that file just like what happens when an NFS mount goes offline sounds like
> a better solution to me.

There are alternatives, like revoking the filehandles or prompting the 
user to close the application themselves. This is the same problem faced 
when unmounting any device.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org