From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262425AbVAPEjW (ORCPT ); Sat, 15 Jan 2005 23:39:22 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262426AbVAPEjW (ORCPT ); Sat, 15 Jan 2005 23:39:22 -0500 Received: from gsstark.mtl.istop.com ([66.11.160.162]:7138 "EHLO stark.xeocode.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262425AbVAPEjL (ORCPT ); Sat, 15 Jan 2005 23:39:11 -0500 To: William Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: the umount() saga for regular linux desktop users References: <200412311741.02864.wh@designed4u.net> In-Reply-To: <200412311741.02864.wh@designed4u.net> From: Greg Stark Organization: The Emacs Conspiracy; member since 1992 Date: 15 Jan 2005 23:39:00 -0500 Message-ID: <87brbqt2cb.fsf@stark.xeocode.com> User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org William 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