[GRLUG] Windows VM thumb drive dismounting

[Grand Rapids Linux Users Group]

On Tue, 2023-05-23 at 12:16 -0400, Grand Rapids Linux Users Group
wrote:
> I'm running Win 10 on a VirtualBox VM in Ubuntu 20.04
> Each time I plug in my thumb drive, Win warns me there's a problem
> with the drive and wants to scan it.
> I've concluded that Win is not dismounting the thumb drive when I
> send the shutdown signal to the VM.
> Is this a feature or a bug? I.e., shouldn't Win be properly ejecting 
> everything when it shuts down? Could the issue have something to do
> with  Win running in the VM?
> Is there really something wrong with the drive or is it safe to
> ignore  this warning? (If there's a problem, would it be that
> something that was  active hadn't been properly saved to the drive?)

If you are using removable media from a VM you should disable automount
on the host OS.  Otherwise the client OS will always see a 'dirty'
file-system as the host OS got-their-first.

If using GNOME this can be accomplished by:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.media-handling automount false
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.media-handling automount-open false

-- 
Adam Tauno Williams <mailto:awilliam at whitemice.org> GPG D95ED383
Systems Administrator, Python Developer, LPI / NCLA