Who's In Charge of What Disks Are Mounted?

[Jerry Krinock]

I'm trying to eject a Firewire drive from a script while running both the
Finder and "Path Finder", (which is another "Finder"-type application with
more features).

If I was just running the Finder, an Applescript to tell Finder to eject
[theDrive] seems to work.  But this sometimes leaves it "orphaned" in Path
Finder.  Also, executing the following shell commands from /Volumes:

sudo umount -f theDrive
sudo rm -rf theDrive

removes theDrive from /Volumes, but leaves it "orphaned" in the Finder, and
also, if I then pull the plug on the drive I get the "you shouldn't have
done that" red alert.

Does anyone know how various parts of the system and applications know what
disks are mounted?  It seems to me that this information should be kept by
in some central file and that all the apps and warnings should look to it.
But it doesn't seem to work that way.  They all seem to have their own
ideas.  How does this work?  Or doesn't it?

Jerry Krinock