I have managed to mount my usb flashdrive and read it's contents. But when I umount the drive, the drive light does not turn off. I am sure the drive is umounted. Is this normal with RH 9 and is it safe to pull out the flashdrive while the drivelight is still on?

Further, if I mount the drive as root, I cannot umount the drive. I get an error message "Cannot umount because device is busy". My present working dir is not the /mnt directory and I am not accessing the drive contents when trying to umount from root.

Please advice !!!!

Instead of using "umount /mnt/usb-flash", use "eject /mnt/usb-flash".

Thanks shuuhen, I'll check if eject works. But after mounting the device an icon appears on X window's desktop and I unmount the device by right-clicking the icon and selecting "Unmount Volume" from the context menu. I suppose Linux would eject/umount the device as appropriate.
Is there any way to automate this process, like the "Unplug or eject hardware" feature of Windows?

Well shuuhen "eject /mnt/usb-flash" does NOT work. The drive get unmounted nodoubt, but the drivelight is still ON. I suppose the drive light should turn off if I need to unplug the flashdrive. Now I need to shut down Linux and turn off my computer to unplug the flashdrive.

maybe the light comes on when the drive has power? I know the light on mine flashes when the kernel detects it.

If the light is still on after "eject /mnt/usb-flash", then it's going to stay on as long as it's getting power. You should be able to just pull the device after ejecting it without needing to worry about it.