System freezes (Ubuntu 10.04LTS) when removing USB device

sounds like it's a problem with your WD usb drive. what "remove safely" does is write all data to the device before cutting power to it so you can eject it safely. because it is freezing, this indicates that data isn't being written. WD stuff were never any good, imho.

utilities that check your hardware aren't entirely accurate especially if the problem is sporadic.

"Sometimes I get a black screen with a few lines of text."

What do they say?

Also, can you post the complete contents of /var/log/dmesg.log at http://paste.ubuntu.com, post a link here, and tell us what date and time the computer last froze completely?

Thanks for this but I'm not quite convinced for the following reasons:

(1) There is no difference in behaviour whether I change any data on the WD drive or not.
(2) All the data on the drive is readable so it must be getting written properly I guess.

Any other ideas?

I recently posted, requesting information. Are you able to provide that?

Eliah

Yes I got it to freeze again. This time it resulted in a black screen with no text. The results of the freeze seem to be random!

The time was 17.58 today 6/8/2011

I have just pasted the contents of dmesg as requested.

You have to provide the links here, or it is impossible for us to find where you pasted them.

If you don't have them yourself, you'll have to do it again.

To clarify, in this case, you're just pasting one document, so you get just one link, so you need to post just one link here.

Eliah

Just noticed that you wanted a link to my paste.
I don't know how to do that.
I just went to pastebin using the link you gave me and pasted under 'Michael Andrews Botanic88

Any help with using pastbin properly would also be appreciated!

When you click Paste!, you are brought to the page where your document is viewable. Copy the text from your web browser's address bar, and paste it into your Launchpad post.

Thanks for that. I should have thought of it :-)

Here is the link to my latest attempt.

http://paste.ubuntu.com/660007/

Eliah

I am having some trouble getting the correct version of dmesg to you!
I have noticed two things:

(1) I might need to send dmesg.0 because I have to restart the computer after it freezes. So I guess that dmesg.0 is the log of the previous session when the computer actually froze (?)

(2) When I type dmesg in a 'terminal' window I get more events logged (going forward in time) than the ones that end up in the dmesg file. For example I can see stuff about my usb drive being recognised when I am in a 'terminal' window, but these don't show up in the dmesg file.

Obviously I cannot see what happens just before my computer freezes because the 'terminal' window freezes too!

Eliah

I have got some more information about my usb hard drive freezing my computer when I click 'remove drive safely'.

After starting the computer I plugged in a memory stick and then removed it safely. Then I plugged in my usb hard drive and tried to remove it safely. The screen went black with no text and the computer froze.

I have pasted the syslog showing these two events near the top at:

http://paste.ubuntu.com/661756/

I have inserted some blank lines in the text to help show what is going on.

An update has been released that fixes this problem, bringing the kernel version number up to 2.6.32-33.72. Just update all the software on your system, and you should get it. If not, make sure you have "Recommended updates (lucid-updates)" enabled in the Updates tab of the Software Sources window (click Settings... at the lower left corner of the Update Manager to bring up the Software Sources window).

If you have any trouble getting this update installed or it doesn't seem to fix the problem, please post a reply here. If everything works OK, you can mark this question as Solved.