#2 eject while in use

[Sean Middleditch]

It might be better for usability (if not stability) to
at least allow the option to eject the media if only a
directory is in use. Lots of software (perhaps broken
software, but it still exists) has a habit of keeping
directories open, such as some graphical file managers,
emulators (like Wine), or daemons like FAM. The option
to allow ejection while only a directory (not regular
file) is in use for people who are willing to accept
the risk of weird error messages or inconsistancies
would be helpful for the regular old desktop users.

[Eugene S. Weiss]

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I agree that it would be better to be able to eject media in
such circumstances. Unfortunately, the door-locking
behavior is implemented in the block-device layer interface,
and can't be controlled by a filesystem. To implement this
it would be necessary to do surgery on existing kernel code,
and hence it would be necessary to distribute submount as a
patch rahter than a discrete module. If submount becomes
widely used Linus may accept a patch that would lock the
door only when a file is open for writing.

[Rocky Zhang]

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Hi,

I use openoffice to write to floppy diskette with subfs, If
I eject floppy before I quit openoffice application, I still
can write to floppy mount point (I thought I can't write to
floppy because there is no floppy); And the files which I
saved as seems gone when I check the floppy content in other
computer. I wonder if it is the same bug with the above.
Any solution for it? Maybe some configuration of openoffice
can prevent it. I can't find it now.

[Eugene S. Weiss]

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When you say you "eject" the floppy, do you use the "eject"
program, or just open the floppy door? If there is a subfs
mount, it should be impossible to write to the floppy mount
point with the drive empty. Perhaps something is
"automatically" unmounting your floppy drive, unmounting
the subfs mount, and hence exposing the underlying mount
point?

[Sean Middleditch]

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One would, of course, need to *write* the patch before it
can be accepted. It hasn't even been proposed yet, iirc.

Also, you *can* disable locking already, using /proc -
perhaps submount can manipulate the correct entry there vs
using an API, for now anyways. Until said theoretical patch
is written and submitted to Linus.

[Rocky Zhang]

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To Yossarian,

"Eject" means I eject floppy from the drive physically, not
using command. I thought there maybe a problem of OpneOffice
because It seems OpenOffice keep directory (mount_point)
open untill you close the file or application. After I
eject my floppy from drive, I can still see contents of
floppy use "ls $mount_point_directory" command. First time I
can't wrtite to floppy if there's no disk when you launch
OpenOffice; After I insert my floppy disk and click "Save",
the light of floppy comes on; Then I eject floppy
physically, it seems I can still access the floppy even
there is no floppy there.

Thanks for reply.

Rocky