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Current state
KDE has ability to "Safely remove" mounted device. This is available in Device notifier plasmoid and by right-clicking on "Places" panel in Dolphin/Konqueror.

Apparently "Safely remove" emits eject (unix command). "Removed" device is synced, unmounted and then ejected. For mechanic devices, like CD drives, it indeed physically ejects device - e.g. opens driver tray. But for USB devices some kind of "power off" message is send. Then they just disappear from list of available devices. After that, they can't be mounted again from GUI until they are physically plugged out and in again or eject -t command is invoked from command line.

But not all devices do disappear. I have noticed that hard drives does not disappear, also my SD card does not disappear when "Safely removed".

User case when this is ineffective
User plugs USB stick in. He writes some files on it. He does "Safely remove" device, but does not - for whatever reason - unplug device. After some time, he decides that he would like to write some more files on that stick. But even though stick is plugged in, it can not be mounted through GUI - user has to run eject -t /dev/sdXY (how is he supposed to know what path there should be?) and only then he can mount it from device notifier (or file manager).

Some people have computer itself in another room than monitor/mouse/keyboard. For them, it is annoying as they have to actually go to computer, unplug device, plug it in again and go back to work.

What can be done about it?
User should have ability to umount, not eject, device. Since adding both "umount" and "eject" can be misleading for average users, there could be some way to configure what command does KDE send to device on "Safely remove". This could be even accessible only through command line, but then should be well documented for people to discover a way to change if they want.

OR KDE should add USB drives to list of devices that should not be ejected, only unmounted (if I correctly suppose that not all devices are ejected and there exists some list or policy for them).

To simply unmount, call umount from the command line. The "uhelper" mount option will help the unprivileged user to umount the device.

Agreed! "Safely remove" is good, but "Unmount" is a definite need.

sdeber wrote:Agreed! "Safely remove" is good, but "Unmount" is a definite need.

I think the same, an "Unmount" button would be very useful.

More than useful: REQUIRED.

I have an internally mounted USB card reader in a desktop PC that if I use the device notifier to "safely remove" an SD card - it powers off the device completely. Only a reboot turns it back on. And yes, I know it's powered off completely because it has an LED power light (kind of annoying actually, but that's a different gripe) and it goes out. Un-mounting the card from the command line works as expected.

Honestly, I like the idea that specific devices have different options in notifier, but we need a not-too-difficult way to make adjustments to our devices for personal preferences and for devices like mine. I'd love to see a menu in System Settings similar to the Device Actions menu for some types of devices.

I know it is an old topic, but it is still as relevant today as it was back then. Having to go to the command line for something so simple and basic is a bit silly.