Another machine that had not been upgraded since 20180116 did not have the problem with the SanDisk cruzer mini USB flash drives.

I upgraded it, now has the same problem:
eject drives "Writing data to device" dialog never closes

time-out.jpg (7,634 bytes)   

time-out.jpg (7,634 bytes)   

Is this problem specific to the "light" image or can you reproduce with another image too?

I expect it to not be specific to the light images, and to be a kernel problem. We will soon switch to kernel 4.15, you might want to try out this one (it's already available in kali-experimental if you want to try it out right now).

Yes I will try other than light.

Is 'kali-experimental' the daily?
If not where?

Also the problem just occurred with a USB hard drive.

I tried the daily
kali-linux-light-rolling-amd64.iso 29-Mar-2018 02:15 943390720
It has kernel 4.14

Where is 'kali-experimental' ?

kali-experimental is a repository that you add to /etc/apt/sources.list

You duplicate the line with "kali-rolling" and replace "kali-rolling" with "kali-experimental".

But the package of this repository will not be installed automatically, you will have to add "-t kali-experimental" to your apt command:

apt -t kali-experimental full-upgrade

I made the change to /etc/apt/sources.list adding the line:
deb http://http.kali.org/kali/ kali-experimental main non-free contrib

reboot

root@kali:~# apt -t kali-experimental full-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
E: The value 'kali-experimental' is invalid for APT::Default-Release as such a release is not available in the sources

I needed to do:

apt update

BEFORE

apt -t kali-experimental full-upgrade

now the kernel is 4.15.11

The problem ejecting the drives still exists!

Tomorrow I will test other images.

I'm afraid that we will not be able to help you further with this hardware support issue.

However this looks like a recent regression since you said that on January 16th, it was working. At that date, we have linux 4.14.12 (see https://pkg.kali.org/pkg/linux). And you also said that 4.14.17 was not working for you.

It would be really helpful if you could "git bisect" the kernel to find out the problematic commit. As a first step, you could try to build 4.14.14 or 4.14.15 and see if the problem is present.

https://kali.training/topic/recompiling-the-linux-kernel/ if you need help to rebuild the kernel you download from kernel.org (or from git).

The 'kali-linux-light-2018-W12-amd64.iso' (most recent weekly) image does NOT have the 'Writing data to device" stuck dialog problem.

It has kernel 4.14.17. The after 'apt update && apt upgrade' it has the eject problem and still has kernel 4.14.17.
So... it is NOT a kernel problem.

I looked at the upgrade list, sorted for the most likely problem files, then upgraded the least likely first.

And yes, my guess was correct, it is 'gvfs', which I upgraded last. 'gvfs' had the most extreme revision number.

install a fresh kali-linux-light-2018-W12-amd64.iso
upgrade gvfs, gvfs-common, gvfs-daemons, gvfs-libs
reboot
eject certain usb flash or usb hard drives and...
BAM! 'Writing data to device" stuck dialog problem

These were my suspect files:

04 upgrade 'Writing data to device" stuck dialog problem

01 gvfs/kali-rolling 1.36.0-1 amd64 [upgradable from: 1.34.1-2]
01 gvfs-common/kali-rolling 1.36.0-1 all [upgradable from: 1.34.1-2]
01 gvfs-daemons/kali-rolling 1.36.0-1 amd64 [upgradable from: 1.34.1-2]
01 gvfs-libs/kali-rolling 1.36.0-1 amd64 [upgradable from: 1.34.1-2]

01 upgrade no problem

02 mount/kali-rolling 2.31.1-0.5 amd64 [upgradable from: 2.31.1-0.4]
02 libmount1/kali-rolling 2.31.1-0.5 amd64 [upgradable from: 2.31.1-0.4]

02 upgrade no problem

04 libblkid1/kali-rolling 2.31.1-0.5 amd64 [upgradable from: 2.31.1-0.4]

03 upgrade no problem

05 udev/kali-rolling 238-3 amd64 [upgradable from: 238-2]
05 libudev1/kali-rolling 238-3 amd64 [upgradable from: 238-2]

On another laptop

• install Kali 2018 w12
• install synaptic
• update and upgrade but HOLD BACK ALL gvfs to 1.34.1-2

All usb storage devices work without the eject problem

Kali 2018 w19 has gvfs 1.36.1-1 has problem ejecting many storage devices

Please update gvfs to at least gvfs 1.36.2-2

I install Manjaro 17.1.10 mini on another laptop, Lenovo IdeaPad U400.
It initially installed:

kernel 4.14.39-1
gvfs 1.36.1-1

Before the update, as mentioned previously,
many flash and hard drives had the persistent eject warning.
To work around the problem,
I have been selecting 'unmount' rather than 'eject'.
But now there seems to be a fix.

I ran the recommended Manjaro upgrade:

kernel 4.14.48-2
gvfs 1.36.2-2

After the update,
ALL flash and hard drives ejected without problem.

Package: gvfs
Version: 1.38.0-2
This update fixes the problem:
eject drives "Writing data to device" dialog never closes

Please mark as resolved.

Thanks for the notice, closing.