hal doesn't automount anymore, you should use programs like gnome-volume-manager or ivman with pmount. I need to fix some things in hal, gnome-vfs and gnome-volume manager to get everyting working fine:

- hal needs a fix for the storage policy (prefered mountpoint of a volume is different from the device it is in)
- hal needs a fix for floppydrive probing (no fix available upstream, still hacking on this myself)
- gnome-volume-manager needs to utilize pmount
- gnome-vfs needs to utilize pmount-hal

Also, I wonder how the hal user could be missing from your system. I guess it doesn't like the group ID right after creating that, could be some weird delayed cache thing. The hal user is added from the .install script as member of groups hal, optical, storage and floppy, which gives hal rights to scan all removable devices, but not internal IDE/SCSI/SATA disks. Assigning hal to the disk group is just as stupid as running it as root user, it has no use dropping privileges then.

I do use gnome-volume-manager.

However i can't even mount the device with pmount-hal directly.

----8<-----------------------------------------------
[tor@sid ~]$ pmount-hal /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/storage_model_Cruzer_Mini
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so
[tor@sid ~]$ hal-device /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/storage_model_Cruzer_Mini
udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/storage_model_Cruzer_Mini'
info.addons = { 'hald-addon-storage' } (string list)
storage.policy.should_mount = true (bool)
block.storage_device = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/storage_model_Cruzer_Mini' (string)
info.udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/storage_model_Cruzer_Mini' (string)
storage.requires_eject = false (bool)
storage.hotpluggable = true (bool)
info.capabilities = { 'storage', 'block' } (string list)
info.category = 'storage' (string)
info.product = 'Cruzer Mini' (string)
info.vendor = 'SanDisk' (string)
storage.removable = true (bool)
storage.physical_device = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_781_5150_SNDK2DF5A43179800204_if0' (string)
storage.lun = 0 (0x0) (int)
storage.drive_type = 'disk' (string)
storage.vendor = 'SanDisk' (string)
storage.model = 'Cruzer Mini' (string)
storage.automount_enabled_hint = true (bool)
storage.media_check_enabled = true (bool)
storage.no_partitions_hint = false (bool)
storage.bus = 'usb' (string)
block.is_volume = false (bool)
block.minor = 16 (0x10) (int)
block.major = 8 (0x8) (int)
block.device = '/dev/sdb' (string)
linux.hotplug_type = 3 (0x3) (int)
info.parent = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_781_5150_SNDK2DF5A43179800204_if0_scsi_host_scsi_device_lun0' (string)
linux.sysfs_path_device = '/sys/block/sdb' (string)
linux.sysfs_path = '/sys/block/sdb' (string)
----8<-----------------------------------------------

And i don't find any volumes/partitions under this device in neither lshal or hal-device-manager


Hal doesn't find my partitions. I can't find any partitions using hal on any of my discs or usb-devices. Im not sure if any of the hal-fixes above concerns this(?)

About the hal-user. Im not sure when or how that user is created. But one problem could be that i have "all" my regular users authenticated over LDAP.

Ok, debugging further i saw a hal-addon-storage running. I then started hal as a foreground application and found this:

8905: 19:58:00.072: addon-storage.c:282: open failed for /dev/sdb: Permission denied

Adding user hal to storage group do get me further. Now i can se the /dev/sdb1 in lshal

But device still doesnt get mounted. gvm tries to issue a mount command but fstab isnt updated.

But pmount-hal do work now if given the right udi