Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

famd and mount

7 views
Skip to first unread message

Ruben Porras

unread,
Nov 6, 2003, 3:50:10 PM11/6/03
to
I can't umount the floppy because famd is using it somehow.

$ umount /mnt/floppy
umount: /mnt/floppy: device is busy
umount: /mnt/floppy: device is busy

$ fuser -v /mnt/floppy/

USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
/mnt/floppy/ root 1536 f.... famd
root kernel mount /mnt/floppy

anyone has any idea why famd don't free the floppy?

it is a bug?

Thanks.


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-gtk-g...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listm...@lists.debian.org

Josselin Mouette

unread,
Nov 6, 2003, 4:30:14 PM11/6/03
to
Le jeu 06/11/2003 à 21:06, Ruben Porras a écrit :
> I can't umount the floppy because famd is using it somehow.
>
> $ umount /mnt/floppy
> umount: /mnt/floppy: device is busy
> umount: /mnt/floppy: device is busy
>
> $ fuser -v /mnt/floppy/
>
> USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
> /mnt/floppy/ root 1536 f.... famd
> root kernel mount /mnt/floppy
>
> anyone has any idea why famd don't free the floppy?

Because fam is full of nasty stupid bugs. You can safely remove it,
GNOME can operate without.
--
.''`. Josselin Mouette /\./\
: :' : josselin...@ens-lyon.org
`. `' jo...@debian.org
`- Debian GNU/Linux -- The power of freedom

signature.asc

B. Bell

unread,
Nov 6, 2003, 4:30:38 PM11/6/03
to
On Thu, 6 Nov 2003, Ruben Porras wrote:

> I can't umount the floppy because famd is using it somehow.
>
> $ umount /mnt/floppy
> umount: /mnt/floppy: device is busy
> umount: /mnt/floppy: device is busy
>
> $ fuser -v /mnt/floppy/
>
> USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
> /mnt/floppy/ root 1536 f.... famd
> root kernel mount /mnt/floppy
>
> anyone has any idea why famd don't free the floppy?
>
> it is a bug?

It does this to my cdrom's all the time as well. Can't be anything but a
bug, IMHO.

-brad

Jacob Emcken

unread,
Nov 6, 2003, 6:00:22 PM11/6/03
to
Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Le jeu 06/11/2003 à 21:06, Ruben Porras a écrit :
>
>>I can't umount the floppy because famd is using it somehow.
>>
>>...

>>
>>anyone has any idea why famd don't free the floppy?
>
>
> Because fam is full of nasty stupid bugs. You can safely remove it,
> GNOME can operate without.


What will we be missing except from our computer NOT telling us to 'go
to hell' every time we try to unmount a removeable device like an
usbkey, floppy, cdrom, samba share etc.
I have read the apt-cache show fam, but I don't know how the removal
will affect the rest of the system. You say that Gnome can run allright,
but if the whole system runs just fine without it, why is it there in
the first place.
Just trying to figure out if I should remove the damn thing :)

Thanks
--Jacob

Josselin Mouette

unread,
Nov 6, 2003, 6:10:12 PM11/6/03
to
Le jeu 06/11/2003 à 23:28, Jacob Emcken a écrit :
> I have read the apt-cache show fam, but I don't know how the removal
> will affect the rest of the system. You say that Gnome can run allright,
> but if the whole system runs just fine without it, why is it there in
> the first place.
> Just trying to figure out if I should remove the damn thing :)

Without it, nautilus won't refresh automatically directories where files
change, and, more annoying the panel won't refresh the menus. There are
other little things that won't work, but it's perfectly safe to remove
it.

signature.asc

Marcelo E. Magallon

unread,
Nov 6, 2003, 10:20:09 PM11/6/03
to
> Without it, nautilus won't refresh automatically directories where
> files change, and, more annoying the panel won't refresh the menus.
> There are other little things that won't work, but it's perfectly
> safe to remove it.

Which is the reason why fam is keeping an eye on /mnt/floppy for
example. Because nautilus told it to do so. I don't use Nautilus
here, and I have never had a problem with fam.

4. When the application is through monitoring a file or
directory, it should call FAMCancelMonitor. If the
application wants to temporarily suspend monitoring of
a file or directory, it may call FAMSuspendMonitor. When
the application is ready to start monitoring again, it
calls FAMResumeMonitor.

Without actually having looked neither at fam nor nautilus code, *I'd*
think the problem is Nautilus, not fam. The stupid thing is, you need
to use nautilus to unmount devices, because Nautilus is the one who
told fam to monitor something in the first place. I've never seen this
problem on IRIX, which is why I think the problem is not with fam
itself. Look:

$ mount /cdrom/
$ ./test -d /cdrom # this is the text application shipped with libfam-dev
lots of output... background this thing
$ umount /cdrom/
umount: /cdrom: device is busy
umount: /cdrom: device is busy

foreground test again and kill it (^C)

DIR /cdrom: /cdrom EndExist
Interupted!
$ umount /cdrom/

and /cdrom is unmounted.

AFAIK there's no way for fam to know that the user wants to unmount the
media. And the configuration file doesn't let you tell it not to
monitor something in particular. I have no idea how IRIX manages this
situation.

What I find irritating is that it's not possible to ask fam what is it
monitoring and why or how to tell it to stop doing so:

When fam is called on to monitor a file, it passes back a
FAMRequest structure. This structure uniquely identifies the
request so that it may be cancelled, using FAMCancelMonitor or
suspended, using FAMSuspendMonitor.

fam is not as bad as some people here seem to think. It's much more
efficient than just wildly poll directories.

Marcelo

Josselin Mouette

unread,
Nov 7, 2003, 4:20:15 AM11/7/03
to
Le ven 07/11/2003 à 00:56, Marcelo E. Magallon a écrit :
> Which is the reason why fam is keeping an eye on /mnt/floppy for
> example. Because nautilus told it to do so. I don't use Nautilus
> here, and I have never had a problem with fam.

If the problem lies in nautilus, I think we should remove fam support
from nautilus until this is fixed, if it is possible to do so without
affecting the control center and the panel. It is completely
unreasonable to release nautilus in this shape.

signature.asc

Enver ALTIN

unread,
Nov 7, 2003, 6:00:15 AM11/7/03
to
On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 01:56, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote:
> fam is not as bad as some people here seem to think. It's much more
> efficient than just wildly poll directories.

I believe this is fixed at some stage back in nautilus 2.3 beta series.
What's the GNOME release we're talking about? sarge/sid?
--
__________
| |
| | Enver ALTIN (a.k.a. skyblue)
| | Software developer, IT consultant
| FRONT |
|==========| FrontSITE Bilgi Teknolojisi A.Ş.
|_____SITE_| http://www.frontsite.com.tr/

signature.asc

Enver ALTIN

unread,
Nov 7, 2003, 6:30:07 AM11/7/03
to
On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 13:08, Jacob Emcken wrote:
> I'm using Debian Sid and this is what I have installed
> I have only noticed problems with Samba shares, but rarely uses cdroms
> and I don't have a floppy drive.

Thanks, I'll check GNOME bugzilla[1] for a bug related to fam today and
take a look at the code in CVS to see what we can do about it.

[1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/

signature.asc

Jacob Emcken

unread,
Nov 7, 2003, 6:40:07 AM11/7/03
to
Enver ALTIN wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 01:56, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote:
>
>> fam is not as bad as some people here seem to think. It's much more
>> efficient than just wildly poll directories.
>
>
> I believe this is fixed at some stage back in nautilus 2.3 beta series.
> What's the GNOME release we're talking about? sarge/sid?

I'm using Debian Sid and this is what I have installed

ii libnautilus2-2 2.4.1-3
ii nautilus 2.4.1-3
ii nautilus-cd-burner 0.5.3-2
ii nautilus-data 2.4.1-3
ii nautilus-media 0.3.0-2


I have only noticed problems with Samba shares, but rarely uses cdroms
and I don't have a floppy drive.

--Jacob

Ruben Porras

unread,
Nov 7, 2003, 8:20:09 AM11/7/03
to
El vie, 07-11-2003 a las 11:53, Enver ALTIN escribió:
> On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 01:56, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote:
> > fam is not as bad as some people here seem to think. It's much more
> > efficient than just wildly poll directories.
>
> I believe this is fixed at some stage back in nautilus 2.3 beta series.
> What's the GNOME release we're talking about? sarge/sid?

Sid.

Ruben Porras

unread,
Nov 7, 2003, 9:10:26 AM11/7/03
to
> Thanks, I'll check GNOME bugzilla[1] for a bug related to fam today and
> take a look at the code in CVS to see what we can do about it.
>
> [1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/

maybe this [2]?

[2] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106783

David A Knight

unread,
Nov 7, 2003, 3:40:12 PM11/7/03
to
On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 08:54, Josselin Mouette wrote:

> If the problem lies in nautilus, I think we should remove fam support
> from nautilus until this is fixed, if it is possible to do so without
> affecting the control center and the panel. It is completely
> unreasonable to release nautilus in this shape.

the fam support comes via gnome-vfs not nautilus itself, so compiling
that without fam support will effect the panel, and anything else which
utilises fam.


David

--
Make your website SCREEM - Site Creating & Editing EnvironMent

URL: http://www.screem.org/
Mail: da...@screem.org

signature.asc

James Strandboge

unread,
Nov 7, 2003, 4:40:35 PM11/7/03
to
On Thu, 2003-11-06 at 17:28, Jacob Emcken wrote:

> Just trying to figure out if I should remove the damn thing :)

I run the gnome2.2 backport on woody without fam. I have users that use
some kde apps with the backport too and things work fine (except having
to logout and back in to refresh menus, and manually having to click the
reload button in nautilus). fam (in woody anyway) had issues with nfs
mounts too-- so I removed it and haven't had issues. Just remove it--
you can always add it back in if you want. ;)

Jamie

--
Targeted Performance Partners, LLC
Web: http://www.tpptraining.com
E-mail: ja...@tpptraining.com
Tel: (585) 271-8370
Fax: (585) 271-8373

0 new messages