[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#628862: gnome-disk-utility: add option to unregister a drive from the kernel

[Mike Paul]

Package: gnome-disk-utility
Version: 2.32.0-1
Severity: wishlist
Tags: upstream

On Linux, a disk's /sys/block/*/device/ directory contains a file called
"delete", and writing a 1 to this file makes the kernel perform any necessary
cleanup and then forget about the device, causing udev to remove its /dev node.
It's a good idea to do this before actually unplugging the drive, to ensure
that there are no buffers waiting to be flushed to it.

It would be helpful if the GNOME Disk Utility included a button to do this.  It
should either imply unmounting any mounted partitions on the disk, or appear
only when no partitions are mounted.

I've noticed that some USB flash drives are "deleted" from the kernel
automatically when unmounted via Nautilus.  However, I use eSATA enclosures to
connect ordinary hard drives as removable disks, and those remain in /dev when
unmounted; that's where this option would be useful.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.39-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages gnome-disk-utility depends on:
ii  libatasmart4          0.17+git20100219-3 ATA S.M.A.R.T. reading and parsing
ii  libatk1.0-0           2.0.0-1            The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libavahi-client3      0.6.30-3           Avahi client library
ii  libavahi-common3      0.6.30-3           Avahi common library
ii  libavahi-glib1        0.6.30-3           Avahi glib integration library
ii  libavahi-ui0          0.6.30-3           Avahi GTK+ User interface library
ii  libc6                 2.13-4             Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libcairo2             1.10.2-6           The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii  libdbus-1-3           1.4.8-3            simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2      0.92-1             simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libfontconfig1        2.8.0-2.2          generic font configuration library
ii  libfreetype6          2.4.4-1            FreeType 2 font engine, shared lib
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0    2.23.3-3           GDK Pixbuf library
ii  libgdu-gtk0           2.32.0-1           GTK+ standard dialog library for l
ii  libgdu0               2.32.0-1           GObject based Disk Utility Library
ii  libglib2.0-0          2.28.6-1           The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgnome-keyring0     3.0.3-1            GNOME keyring services library
ii  libgtk2.0-0           2.24.4-3           The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libnautilus-extension 2.30.1-3           libraries for nautilus components 
ii  libnotify1 [libnotify 0.5.0-2            sends desktop notifications to a n
ii  libpango1.0-0         1.28.3-6           Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  libunique-1.0-0       1.1.6-2            Library for writing single instanc
ii  libx11-6              2:1.4.3-1          X11 client-side library

gnome-disk-utility recommends no packages.

gnome-disk-utility suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information