I know how to read my NTFS files on my USB disk when I am connected to an OpenSuze machine.
I simply plug the USB disk to the Linux machine, and I type "mount /dev/sdb1 /mydisk"
Of course, before removing the disk I do "umount /mydisk".
However I'm pretty sure this is not enough if I want to unplug the disk.
Under Windows I know that I have to click the "remove hardware" icon.
There is probably something to do under Suze Linux before unplugging a device, something like "rmdev /dev/sdb" ?
If somebody knows the correct way to do it, can you please tell me ?
Regards
Yordan

On SUSE Linux, all you have to do is plug and press safely remove, the system's HAL is going to do all the mounting and unmounting. That's the beauty of the HAL system that was implemented across all major Linux systems. Just like in Windows and MacOS X, they have a HAL system that deals with all the hardware components.

Only use the manual command lines only when necessary.

xboxrulz

lol, alright ... but remember, be sure to press Safely Remove Disc before unplugging though!!

xboxrulz

If you are really concerned about your USB disk, then you should shut down the SUSE operating system before unplugging the USB disk from the USB port on your computer. With the operating system shut down, you can be sure that the USB disk is no longer in use and will not be affected when you pull out the device.

lol, i don't think we have to be that drastic when we have to unmount our USB key. That's a lil' unnecessary.

Just follow the standard "Safely Remove" or umount.

xboxrulz

That was preciseley the aim of the present post. When I am working on a Microsoft Windows machine, there is a "safely remove" button to press.
When I am on an OpenSuze command-line window, there is no button to press, only command lines to type. I can type "yast" and see things, I can type"mont /dev/sda /somewher", but there is no graphic display, so no button to press.
And I see that directly unplogging is not safe, when I re-plug the disk I see it in use, or it changes name (sdb to sdc), and sometimes I cannot mount it and I have to reboot my Linux system, or directly powerdown because it's unable to shutdown because freezing on the USB devices.

I would be very interested to learn the final answer to this. I believe I have had a similar problem. I was using a USB drive to transfer files from a Windows machine to SuSE 9.1. I was using shell scripts, and I'm certain I umount'ed the drive, but the FAT32 partition table was corrupted. I know how to recover now, but I didn't then. Fortunately, I had copied what I needed, so I just reformatted the drive.

The ideal answer would be to compare the source code for umount with the source code for: bringing sysinfo:/ up in Konqueror, right-clicking on a drive, and selecting "Unmount." That is beyond my skill set. It is also probable that such problems depend on the USB device drivers, and are very hardware-dependent.

There are many issues with computers for which there is no final answer. Successful computer users learn to minimize wasted time. If there's a bug you don't understand, find a workaround, and stay away from the bug. In my case, it was learning how to get a partially-functional computer onto the network by booting a live CD Linux on it, and transferring the files through the network instead of using a USB hard drive. It actually turned out to be faster!

If I plugin an external disk then openSuse detects and mounts it for me. It also creates shortcuts on the destop and if I rightclick on them, then there is an option to safely remove the disk ...

ps. the reason why you should 'safely remove' your hardware is because some write actions are cached before they are actualy done. If you unplug the drive while linux is writing the caches to the disk then data might be corrupted. The flush command (if I remember correctly, might as wel be another command ) writes these caches for you so you can unplug the disk even without safely removing it (I've removed a lot of sticks and disks without first using the safely remove features).

Oh, you don't have a GUI installed? Then I'm not sure. Just be sure that HAL is installed.

I always have a desktop environment installed whenever I use Linux.

xboxrulz

Yes, you are doing this the right way. Unfortunately a lot of collegues, prefer using bare command line on some servers. Then, they simply don't install the GUI, cause these gurus thing that it's useless (or far below their smartness).