I'm running Xubuntu 16.04LTS. A 64 bit computer. I was working on the computer all day and went to unmount a usb flash drive and got the attached popup. I didn't know what to do so I just left the usb drive in and turned off the computer.

I was using Kate text editor earlier and closed out of that. And LibreOffice. And Calibre's ebook viewer. I closed out of everything. Including browsers. And I didn't see anything running in Task Manager. Still I got the popup.

How do I deal with this?

Thank you.

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I guess it worked itself out. When I turned on the computer this morning I got the attached message. But I mounted the flash drive and checked the .odt file I'd been working on yesterday and I didn't lose any data and I was able to unmouont the flash drive with no pop-up warning.

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Kactivitymanagerd seems to be a thing that monitors what you get up to in the belief that something on the computer may find the information useful!
https://github.com/KDE/kactivitymanagerd
It was obviously busy on the first occasion, and had some problem on the second. It does seem to be a bit buggy. If you never use anything that wants it, you can disable it from the menu: System Settings - Workspace - Desktop Behavior - Activities - Privacy. Just tick the "Do not remember" box.

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Since you turned off the computer, Linux had to try to resolve any open file handles as part of the organized shutdown.

Unless you shut it off not using a shutdown command.

Either case, perhaps the file handles got resolved, or closed prior to this, or as part of an organized shutdown. Or, no file activity was unresolved even if the system still felt handles were open.

I do see this from time to time, in my case with Mint DE, but with a thumb stick. I know I closed files and quit an application, but it complains that something is still using the disk. In my case I may check to verify that my pwd for any open file manager or terminal does not reflect any references to the thumb stick, and many times by the time I'm done checking, all is clear and the u-mount works.

Another thing I've noticed is that my file manager will retain the former location. Such as if I was down into the thumbstick, but then went up a few levels and was now at a level beyond the thumb stick mount. The top status may still show my former depth of directory, which would include a path to the mounted file system. As a result, I may find that exiting the File Manager helps to remove whatever soft reference exists and this frees up any tie in to file handles.

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Thanks David. I've been using Xubuntu for about 7 years now and this was the first issue with Kactivitymanagerd so for now I'm figuring I'll leave it. In terms of removing it, though, how would I know if I used anything that wants it? How would I know it was safe to remove? And I tried to follow your instructions for disabling it (should it ever become problematic) but couldn't find it. Xubuntu's Application Menu has main entries for "Settings" and "System" and neither lead to "Workspace." (One of them does lead to "Workspaces" though.) What am I doing wrong?

Thanks rtmistler. Good info. And yes, I did use the shutdown button. When I turned on the computer in the morning, though, the usb flash drive in question (which I'd left plugged in when I shut the computer down) was unmounted. And, as I said, no data was lost. So <shrugs> I'm not particularly worried about it anymore.

However the system is shut down, destructively or an organized software shutdown, by definition, nothing is mounted. Merely leaving the stick plugged in just means it is plugged in. Granted there may have been potentially unresolved file handles and incomplete data write activity. This appears to not have been the case, otherwise there might have been a slight amount of lost data. And also by default, when booting Linux, nothing is considered mounted and resources are mounted as part of the boot.

Glad there was no harm.

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Thanks.

Oops! I knew that Kactivitymanagerd was a KDE thing and you mentioned Kate, so the Xububtu reference passed me by. How you got a KDE daemon on an Xfce system is beyond me! You could try the command
sudo systemctl disable kactivitymanagerd.service
which I think will work if it's started by systemd, or uninstall the package Kactivitymanagerd. Perhaps it's just better to leave it alone!

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Thanks David. Yeah, I'm going to leave it. But if I wanted to remove it, just get rid of it from Synaptic Package Manager? (screenshot)

And a slightly related question: When I click on the "re-load" button in Synaptic, am I to then click the "mark all upgrades" button?

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Just removing it should work, as I don't see how Xfce can be using it.

As to the Reload and Updates question, the answer is yes, if you want to see what's become available since you last re-loaded. This is (slightly) helpful:
http://wiki.debian.org/HowToSynaptic

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Thanks David. I was going to remove it, but then I wasn't sure to whether "remove" it or "complete remove" it. Which one should I choose? See screenshots for what comes up.

And I also have another question about the "reload" question but I'll post that separately.

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"Remove" removes the application and its associated data files, but leaves configuration files intact.


"Completely remove" removes everything including configuration files.

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Thanks goumba, I did the "remove."