> Part of the problem is security - you don't want any user to remove/use the
> floppy other than the owner of the floppy.
On the contrary, if the machine is used by more than one person,
it is crucial to be able to remove a floppy which was left there
by someone else who walked away from his terminal.
This cannot be enforced since
> anyone with physical access to the system can remove the floppy (mounted
> or not). Removal of a mounted device will (nearly always) damage the
> file system.
The floppy drive normally has a light on it which says when the drive
is spinning. If each person waits for the drive to stop spinning
before removing a floppy, then with suitably written software the file
system will never be damaged by removing a floppy.
Many of the issues for floppy drives apply to any removable media,
That is true, and the same work might be of benefit with other
removable media. Even the ones which normally require a command
from the computer to open the drive give you some way to remove
the media manually (such as a hole to stick a pin into).
as network file systems and file systems that are not on RAID protected
media.
No, these are never "removed" as part of normal system operation.
They can be disconnected by malfunction, but that is a different matter.
If you want super-high reliability, of course you should use RAID or
some other solution. But for ordinary activities, we do not say
the software has a flaw if hardware malfunctions can lose data.
(Obviously we hope hardware malfunctions will not occur.)
However, removing removable media is part of normal operation,
and the software should support it conveniently and reliably.
After all, some of the same issues on hitting the floppy eject button
could be made for hitting the power button instead of doing a shutdown.
This shows a fundamentally mistaken way of looking at the question.
Shutdowns are rare, and C-M-DEL or even `shutdown -h now' are
convenient enough ways to request one. Removing a floppy is much more
frequent and should be made convenient as well as reliable.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 23 2000 - 21:00:20 EST