On Wednesday, April 19, 2006 @ 7:41 PM, Carlos Robinson wrote:

The Wednesday 2006-04-19 at 17:10 -0700, Brad Dameron wrote:

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I have not found any decent documentation on this and from what I can see this daemon is just to detect changes in hardware like when you insert a cd-rom, a floppy, memory card, etc. Am I correct? And disabling this on a server should not cause any issues?

No, it would. Don't do that.

# Short-Description: HAL is a daemon for managning information about the hardware on the system # Description: HAL is a hardware abstraction layer and aims to provide a live list of devices present # in the system at any point in time. HAL tries to understand both physical devices (such # as PCI, USB) and the device classes (such as input, net and block) physical devices have, # and it allows merging of information from so called device info files specific to a device. # HAL provides a network API through D-BUS for querying devices and notifying when things # change. Finally, HAL provides some monitoring (in an unintrusive way) of devices, presently # ethernet link detection and volume mounts are monitored. This, and more, is all described # in the HAL specification #

- -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

Completely OT, but I can't resist. While it may not be a good idea to disable HAL, it certainly would have been nice if the HAL folks had provided some sort of front-end graphics module for modifying at least some of the high-level basics of this animal. As far as I can tell, if you don't want all of the defaults, get ready to start laying XML code. If this were some optional add-on app, that would be one thing, but for something that operates close to the foundation of the OS, it could use a bit more user-friendliness. The reason for this rant is that I had to modify the HAL XML code just to prevent HAL from trying to automount my floppy drive every time I booted. Now I don't know about most people, but I personally don't use my floppy each time I boot into my system. As a matter of fact, as far as I can recall, the last time I used it was to make a boot floppy, and that was a long time ago. Greg Wallace

On Thu, 2006-04-20 at 11:36 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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The Wednesday 2006-04-19 at 22:35 -0500, Greg Wallace wrote:

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Completely OT, but I can't resist. While it may not be a good idea to disable HAL, it certainly would have been nice if the HAL folks had provided some sort of front-end graphics module for modifying at least some of the high-level basics of this animal.

Absolutely!

(And I don't think it is OT)

To compound problems, it is not even mentioned in the SuSE admin book, at least in version 9.3, don't know later.

Also the precise reason linux is being so s l o w to be adopted by many windows users. People converting from windows -DON'T- want to go to a command line to edit a file no matter how much faster it is. It is all about proper syntax in the config files which is not guaranteed when editing by hand. Teach people how to use the system first then teach them the shortcuts, it is a much faster process. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998

On Wed, Apr 19, 2006 at 10:35:35PM -0500, Greg Wallace wrote:

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I have not found any decent documentation on this and from what I can see this daemon is just to detect changes in hardware like when you insert a cd-rom, a floppy, memory card, etc. Am I correct? And disabling this on a server should not cause any issues?

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No, it would. Don't do that.

I have disabled it, because it is very annoying, and I could not find any documentation how to disable the annoying behavior. I have not seen any breakage from disabling yet.

Completely OT, but I can't resist. While it may not be a good idea to disable HAL, it certainly would have been nice if the HAL folks had provided some sort of front-end graphics module for modifying at least some of the high-level basics of this animal. As far as I can tell, if you don't want all of the defaults, get ready to start laying XML code.

And even for this XML, I could not find documentation.

If this were some optional add-on app, that would be one thing, but for something that operates close to the foundation of the OS, it could use a bit more user-friendliness. The reason for this rant is that I had to modify the HAL XML code just to prevent HAL from trying to automount my floppy drive every time I booted.

Oh, automounting a (CD|DVD)-RW that you want to burn, isn't a very good idea, either :-((

Now I don't know about most people, but I personally don't use my floppy each time I boot into my system. As a matter of fact, as far as I can recall, the last time I used it was to make a boot floppy, and that was a long time ago.

Oh, and you don't want to _mount_ the floppy if you want to create a boot-floppy. I find automounting removable media like dvd/cd/floppy a very error prone procedure :-((

On Thu, Apr 20, 2006 at 02:46:39PM +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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Oh, automounting a (CD|DVD)-RW that you want to burn, isn't a very good idea, either :-(( I agree. But I didn't have to dissable hald to dissable automounting.

So, please share your knowledge with me: how to disable that without disabling hald?

On Thu, 2006-04-20 at 13:20 +0200, Josef Wolf wrote:

I find automounting removable media like dvd/cd/floppy a very error prone procedure :-((

besides fstab what do you need to disable automounting? -- ___ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ | | | | [__ | | | |___ |_|_| ___] | \/

On Saturday 22 April 2006 09:24, Istvan Gabor wrote:

If hal guys don't provide such a tool then SUSE people should make one (either standalone or in YAST).

...there should be a graphical interface where one can set:

1. What devices she/he wants to be automounted. Eg. I don't like if optical devices (CD/DVD) are automounted but it is a good thing for USB-devices (pendrive).  

2. The mountpoint (name) of the mounted device. Eg. I prefer the name 'pendrive' to 'FlashDisk' for my USB pendrive but if I enable automounting it always becomes 'FlashDisk'.  I also cant't stand the name 'cdrecorder' (SUSE's default).

Nicely put, Istvan! If there /is/ a wishlist, this succinct and well-written request should shoot straight to the top (IMHO, of course!) Carl

On Saturday 22 April 2006 15:24, Istvan Gabor wrote:

I also cant't stand the name 'cdrecorder' (SUSE's default).

That's to distinguish it from its read-only counter-part (AKA cdrom). Perhaps you would prefer cdrwm? ;) Cheers, Leen

On Saturday 22 April 2006 18:45, Istvan Gabor wrote:

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That's to distinguish it from its read-only counter-part

(AKA cdrom). Perhaps

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you would prefer cdrwm? ;)

Well,

I prefer cdrw. But it could be cdburner, cdwriter, whatever. The important is being able to set it up easily w/o hacking fstab and hal stuff.

Yes, you're right. I didn't say it before, but I would welcome an application for that. :) BTW, those HAL-files are xml, right? Then there must be a DTD-file for them somewhere, right? If so, those DTD-files could be loaded in Quanta, and it would make it easier to edit them (except for PCDATA stuff). But a specific application would be far better. There seems to be nothing on SourceForge or Berlios. But there is something on Freshmeat: http://freshmeat.net/projects/kde-hal-device-manager/ Cheers, Leen

At 04:48 PM 4/22/2006 +0200, Leendert Meyer wrote:

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On Saturday 22 April 2006 15:24, Istvan Gabor wrote:

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I also cant't stand the name 'cdrecorder' (SUSE's default).

That's to distinguish it from its read-only counter-part (AKA cdrom). Perhaps you would prefer cdrwm? ;)

Cheers,

Leen

I guess you are being sarcastic, but I hope that something like cdrwm doesn't catch on. The UNIX lunatix have made most of the filenames impossible to coordinate with what they do. I suppose that those people who wrote and worked with UNIX decades ago probably never had any typing courses, and were forced to hunt and peck on their old Teletype machines, and so created very short names. Also, of course, names had to live in machine memory, which was in very short supply in those days. Nowadays, almost every kid takes a course called "keyboarding," or, in plain English, typing, and can deal with a computer keyboard probably faster than most of us on the list! Let us continue to name programs with nomens that mean something and are memorable. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.4.4/320 - Release Date: 4/20/2006

On Saturday, April 22, 2006 @ 5:13 PM, Ken Schneider wrote:

On Sat, 2006-04-22 at 17:58 -0400, Doug McGarrett wrote:

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At 04:48 PM 4/22/2006 +0200, Leendert Meyer wrote:

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On Saturday 22 April 2006 15:24, Istvan Gabor wrote:

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I also cant't stand the name 'cdrecorder' (SUSE's default).

That's to distinguish it from its read-only counter-part (AKA cdrom).

Why, do they refer to different pieces of hardware? I see no need to have different names for the same piece of hardware just to reference a different operation, read or burn.

-- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998

My machine only has one DVD device which reads and writes CDs but only reads DVDs. There are two different devices set up for it in fstab, /dev/cdrom and /dev/cdrecorder. The configuration of the two is identical. One points to /media/cdrom and the other to /media/cdrecorder. They both are of type subfs, which I think means they're HAL managed. There was no /media/cdrom on my machine, though I'm pretty sure there was one there before. So, just for the heck of it, I created it again. I plugged in a CD and it auto-mounted to /media/cdrecorder. So, I umounted it and mounted it under /media/cdrom. When I issued the mount, I got the following message back -- mount: block device is write-protected, mounting read-only I guess HAL is enforcing a read-only capability if you actually use /dev/cdrom instead of /dev/cdrecorder. Greg Wallace

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Completely OT, but I can't resist. While it may not be a good idea to disable HAL, it certainly would have been nice if the HAL folks had

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some sort of front-end graphics module for modifying at least some of the high-level basics of this animal. As far as I can tell, if you don't want all of the defaults, get ready to start laying XML code. If this were some optional add-on app, that would be one thing, but for something that operates close to the foundation of the OS, it could use a bit more user-friendliness. The reason for this rant is that I had to modify the HAL XML code just to prevent HAL from trying to automount my floppy drive every time I booted. Now I don't know about most people, but I

On Saturday, April 22, 2006 @ 8:24 AM, Istvan Gabor wrote: provided personally don't

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use my floppy each time I boot into my system. As a matter of fact, as far as I can recall, the last time I used it was to make a boot floppy, and that was a long time ago.

Greg Wallace

Hello Greg and others:

I think this is not OT at all. This hal/hald/automount issue in Linux/SUSE if very confusing. It might work well if you are fine with all the defaults. But if you want to change something it becomes a pain.

I guess there should be a graphical interface where one can set:

1. What devices she/he wants to be automounted. Eg. I don't like if optical devices (CD/DVD) are automounted but it is a good thing for USB-devices (pendrive).

2. The mountpoint (name) of the mounted device. Eg. I prefer the name 'pendrive' to 'FlashDisk' for my USB pendrive but if I enable automounting it always becomes 'FlashDisk'. I also cant't stand the name 'cdrecorder' (SUSE's default).

Just having those 2 options would be a giant step forward. Anyone wanting to "get fancy" could always fall back on the XML code, but this would at least allow for basic tuning of HAL.

If HAL guys don't provide such a tool then SUSE people should

Either way would be ok, but it seems like it would be something that should be integrated into YAST, at least at some point in time.

Cheers, IG

Greg Wallace