Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 26 May 2008 18:20:48 +0200 | From | Jan Kara <> | Subject | Re: Top 10 bugs/warnings for the week of March 23rd, 2008 |
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On Mon 26-05-08 12:48:32, Ingo Molnar wrote: > > * Theodore Tso <tytso@MIT.EDU> wrote: > > > On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 11:39:13AM +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote: > > > Exactly why is pulling an USB stick considered "stupid"? Last i checked > > > there was no physical lock preventing users from doing that. > > > > > > Sure, pulling a mounted USB stick is inconvenient ... for _us_ > > > kernel developers. But the user really doesnt care and shouldnt > > > care. > > > > Because they could lose data? Because if the kernel wakes up and > > tries writing to the USB stick right as they pull it out, it could > > physically damage the flash format? I know, stupid reason... :-) > > user can lose data in many other ways, that's not the issue - the issue > here is something very crutial: the kernel gets confused about a _very_ > common user-triggerable condition. > > That confusion must not happen in a modern OS and the kernel should be > resilient and cope with such external events. And we must not > deprioritize it with an incorrect "user did something stupid" tag... > That argument might have been valid 15 years ago when floppies could be > locked and you needed a needle to force-eject it but it is rather lame > today when unplugging an USB stick is as easy as moving the mouse. > > If there's something stupid here it's the kernel not dealing with that > condition properly. Yes, the "user action" here looks "trivial" to the > user but what happens below is indeed very hard technically, but who > said that writing an OS from scratch would be an easy task? ;-) Well, Ingo, I don't know if you've noticed but the machine continues to run just fine, as far as I understand. It only spits a dangerously looking warning and that's it. I agree we shouldn't be doing this but I don't really find this a critical problem.
Honza -- Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> SUSE Labs, CR
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