[ale] USB auto mount

[Brian Pitts]

Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts wrote:
> I have been stubborn about refusing to give my beloved Ubuntu box the  
> Windows three finger salute.  I hope that a reboot would fix it but I  
> would really like to know what process is erred and how to set it right.
The possible culprits are, hald, dbus, and gnome-volume-manager. Here 
are some debugging tips . They're from Mandriva, so the placement of  
configuration files etc. might be a little different.
 
http://wiki.mandriva.com/Docs/SysAdmin/Config/HotPlug

Now, the tricky part.. You plug a device and "it doesn't work !". In 
order to get this fixed, you need to fill bug report to the correct 
package, to help maintainers to understand what is the exact problem. 
The best way to find the right component is to use a differential 
diagnosis (like a medical diagnosis). Let's try this with a removable 
storage device : I plugged a removable harddrive.

    * Do you see a new icon on your desktop ? if yes, everything is 
fine, your test is finished
    * No new icon on the desktop : check /etc/fstab to see if new mount 
point was added for your device. If unsure, unplug the device, check 
/etc/fstab, then plug your device, wait a little (10s) and check again. 
If mount point was added and is mounted, report a bug on nautilus (for 
GNOME) or kdebase (KDE).
    * If /etc/fstab contains a mount point for your entry, it means 
gnome-volume-manager didn't mount it automatically. Check if 
gnome-volume-manager is running (by running ps aux | grep 
gnome-volume-manager in a terminal) and if it is configured to automount 
removable devices.
          o If it is, check if hal was not configured to disable 
automount hint (read by gnome-volume-manager) in /etc/hal/hald.conf 
(storage_automount_enabled_hint).
          o If it is set, make sure this hint wasn't disabled for your 
particular device. For that, run hal-device-manager (in hal-gnome 
package) and check value for this parameter for your particular device.
          o If this hint was set, it appears to be a bug in 
gnome-volume-manager which should be reported.
          o If this hint was not set, it was either disabled on purpose 
or by mistake or it could be a bug. This bug should be reported on hal 
package.
    * If /etc/fstab doesn't contain mount point entry, either hal didn't 
detect your device or didn't create mount point for it :
          o check if hald is running correctly (/etc/init.d/haldaemon 
status). Make sure dbus system bus is running too (it must be started 
*before* haldaemon), using /etc/init.d/messagebus status.
          o if hal is running correctly, try to monitor for hal new 
events using hal-device-manager : start hal-device-manager, then plug 
(or unplug) your device. System tree view in hal-device-manager should 
be modified (with a latency up to 5 or 10s).
                + if tree view doesn't change, hal didn't receive any 
event from hotplug or didn't knew how to deal with them. Check syslog 
when plugging/unplugging your device :
                      # if kernel notices something, it is probably a 
bug in hal.
                      # If not, it is either a bug in hotplug or kernel.
                + if tree view did notice the changes, it means some 
parameters for this device were missing or wrong. You should report a 
bug in hal.

When reporting bug for hal or gnome-volume-manager, you should always 
add "lshal" log to bug report, which is a text representation of HAL 
view of your system.