kernel panic because I pulled a floppy?

[Bob Johnson]

On 12/5/05, Michael P. Soulier <msoulier at digitaltorque.ca> wrote:
> On 12/4/05, Kris Kennaway <kris at obsecurity.org> wrote:
> > > Is this true? If so, it would be the very first Unix that I've seen
> > > crash from this kind of user-mistake.
> >
> > Turns out it's pretty hard to fix.
>
> Well, all I know is that it does happen on Linux, Solaris... I don't
> recall seeing it on HP-UX...
>
> I've popped floppies on those OSs before without incident when I went
> back to the directory. Luckily it's avoidable, just a little
> disappointing given FreeBSD's rock-solid reputation.
>

My understanding, and it could be completely wrong, is that Linux
distributions usually use something like amd(8) (the automount daemon)
to manage removable devices.  They automount automagically when
inserted, and unmount when they haven't been used for a while, so if
you forget about them and pull them out they are usually not mounted
and don't cause problems.

You might try setting up amd(8) to see if that makes things more robust.

- Bob