I want my Device Notifier choices back! Grrrrrr

[oshunluvr]

RANT:

This has my peeving me off for quite some time.

Some nimrod dev took our choices out of Device Notifier some time ago and I want them back!

Why in hell can't I decide if I want to un-mount or disconnect or power-off a device? If I make a stupid choice, it's on me. I'm friggen' ticked off about this one. I might as well switch to Gnome if I'm going to be treated like a child.

Anyone know how to re-code the Device Notifier to return it to functional?

[claydoh]

?? Which part are you missing?

I don't have a power-off option in my device notifier (probably because I don't have any powered device), but I do have unmount/unmount --well, 'safely remove" What I do not like is that once you "safely remove" a thumbdrive you can't simply go and remount it in the device manager, you have to unplug then plug it back in.


I betcha it may be a "symptom" of various features moving into the kernel proper.

[SteveRiley]

What I do not like is that once you "safely remove" a thumbdrive you can't simply go and remount it in the device manager, you have to unplug then plug it back in.

Works here. Left-click the Device Notifier, left-click the USB drive, and click the Dolphin icon again.

[Rog131]

A bit more information - please

Some nimrod dev took our choices out of Device Notifier some time ago...Anyone know how to re-code the Device Notifier to return it to functional?

Do you have a link - to the revision/blog/something ?
Was the change made in the device notifier or solid or ... ?

The device notifier is now a bunch of qml scripts:

:~$ locate devicenotifier
/usr/include/solid/devicenotifier.h
/usr/share/kde4/apps/plasma/plasmoids/notifier/contents/ui/devicenotifier.qml
/usr/share/kde4/services/plasma-applet-devicenotifier.desktop

=> /usr/share/kde4/apps/plasma/plasmoids/notifier/contents/ui/

Latest revisions of devicenotifier: https://projects.kde.org/projects/kd...devicenotifier

I can't find big changes.

[oshunluvr]

I'm not at my Linux computer at the moment, but there the only choice I have is "Safely remove" which equals unmount and power off. The device departs from system awareness and the only way to reconnect it is to physically unplug it and plug it back in. This applies to USB thumb drives (dumb, I've never needed to power it off before removing one, unmounting is sufficient - even in the windows environment) and SD card readers (really dumb as this powers off the card reader leaving it useless until re-plugged in. If it's an internal card reader, you have to reboot to reconnect it).

What I want is unmount/eject to be an option within the Device Notifier GUI. What's the point of a GUI interface if there are options not included in it? The only answer is to restrict the users to what the dev thinks we should have. Irksome at a minimum.

@Rog: This change occurred as far back as 9.04 when I believe the intent was to have device notifier decide if "unmount/eject" was proper or if "power down" was needed based on the device. Again - working from memory here, not documents - this was to accommodate the growing number of USB hard drive devices. The problem is they did not plan on devices that improperly report their abilities to the system. A simple option to select unmount would solve this. Of course, as true software engineers do, this is not the dev's problem so it doesn't exist despite the numbers of complaints. Just google "safely remove kills sd card reader"

I tried re-writing the udev rules for my sd card reader, but either I can't get it right or the system is defeating me. Besides this option would be unworkable for all the thumb drives I use.

Steve: When you click on a device in dolphin, isn't it mounted? Is there an "unmount" option there? No? Here's an example of what I'm complaining about:

Select thumb drive from the pile.
Insert and open the drive with dolphin to check what was on it and that it's safe to use for a bootable ISO.
Select "safely remove"
Device is ejected/powered down (lights go out).
Pull device, plug it back in.
Re-format it.
Run unetbootin.

Three of those steps could be one with a simple unmount option in device manager or even dolphin for that matter. And why we're at it, why isn't there a format device option in those same places?

[Rog131]

A bug report - Bug 293906 - KDE device notifier does not show USB devices after umounting: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=293906

Previosly in KDE-3.5 (and sometimes in 4.x releases) it was able to remount previosly unmounted USB devices through "device notifier".

This useful option disappear for me in some KDE relaeses some time ago and has appeared again after installing kde-4.8, but for a short time, as now it is unavailable again...

[SteveRiley]

Steve: When you click on a device in dolphin, isn't it mounted? Is there an "unmount" option there? No?

I'm seeing the behavior you want. I can freely mount/unmount/remount an inserted USB drive without ever having to unplug/replug.

When I first insert the drive, Device Notifier pops up in the system tray, with its menu of choices. I click Dolphin: the drive mounts and Dolphin opens to that location. Then, inside either Dolphin or Device Notifier, I click the eject icon. The Dolphin window empties, as you'd expect. Finally, inside either Dolphin or Device Notifier, I click the drive's icon, and again I see the menu of options, Dolphin being one of them. I click that, and the existing open Dolphin window re-displays the drive's contents.

Dunno what's wrong on your end. Maybe you can do this only on the third Wednesday in April after the first full moon in spring at 4 o'clock when the bells ring?

[HalationEffect]

I noticed the change in behaviour that oshunluvr has reported some time back. After I click the 'safely remove' button beside a removable drive in Device Notifier, the icon for that drive disappears (from both Device Notifier and from Dolphin), leaving nothing visible to click on to re-mount it. The only way I can get the icon back short of a reboot is to physically disconnect & reconnect the drive.

(Note: I'm still running 12.04, so apologies if this post just constitutes noise in this thread)

[oshunluvr]

My Dolphin does not have an eject icon that I'm aware of. Where is it located? The only option I get is "Safely Remove"

[SteveRiley]

I don't have any USB drives at work. I'll take some screen shots when I get home.

[oshunluvr]

No thumb drives at work? Boy, I thought the Feds were paranoid!

[SteveRiley]

Half the time I work from home, and half the time I come to Riverbed's office on Microsoft's campus. We have space in building 25 and a lab. The two firms partner on a number of joint projects. It's not so bad coming over here when you don't actually work for the giant, haha. And I enjoy the little bit of subversion, carrying a Linux laptop around

[oshunluvr]

My screen shots in order:
#1 USB drive inserted but not yet accessed
#2 Submenu showing available options while unmounted
#3 Submenu after mounting showing only additional option "Safely Remove"
#4 After "Safely Remove" USB drive missing

The only way to get it back is to pull and re-insert.

[67GTA]

I'm getting the same behavior. I've never noticed it because when I eject a drive, it is ready to come out. Definitely a PITA.

[oshunluvr]

OK, here's some weirdness: I ran this several times to be sure I wasn't missing something and I verified that Device Notifier showed the same as Dolphin, etc. ONCE I saw the USB drive reappear in Dolphin unmounted a couple seconds after Safely Removing. I assumed I was seeing things since I was screenshot-ing and all the other things going on around here, but then I took a look at dmesg output and saw this line exactly once:

[464342.550881] sdj: detected capacity change from 1029701632 to 0
[464342.573118] WARNING! power/level is deprecated; use power/control instead

Every other time I Safely Removed, I got only this line at the end of the output:

[464379.225091] sdj: detected capacity change from 1029701632 to 0

I'll bet the family dog that that's the one time the USB drive came back without the unplugging. Maybe we're on to something here...