hal and fstab and kde

I just did a clean install of slack 12 on a free partition. I have 2 hd's with several partitions which I only mount when I need them. Do I have to add them in fstab or not? I don't understand how hal/dbus works. In KDE the partitions are shown and I can "mount" (is it really mounting?) them but they all have the same name (41G Media). I must mount them to see if it is sda1 or sda2. What gives them names? KDE or udev? What will happen if I add them to fstab? In CHANGES_AND_HINTS I found this:

The /dev/cdrom line in /etc/fstab is commented out by default, as it interferes with HAL.

So I don't know what to do.

You can rename the icon by right-clicking on it an select properties (Eigenschappen in Dutch, don't know what it says in German).
I tried it, and after unmounting and remounting the partition on the console, the name stayed the same.
I don't know what it will do over a reboot, but maybe this is a solution to your problem?

If I rename the icon and press "ok" it mounts the partition and copies all files from
"system:/media/sda1" to "file:///media/disk". Had to abort. I don't think renaming
the icons is the right way. Changing the mountpoint in the properties tab also starts copying.

and if you try mounting the partition first, and then renaming the icon?

It's the same. Where can I configure Konqueror not to mount everything on "media/disk"?
Is it a udev or KDE thing?

For context, I'll paste both the part of C&H that you quoted, as well as the part that occurs after it.

The /dev/cdrom line in /etc/fstab is commented out by default, as it interferes
with HAL. HAL defaults to on, so if you do not wish to use it, you will need
to chmod -x /etc/rc.d/rc.hald and uncomment the /dev/cdrom line in /etc/fstab

Note that HAL will honor settings in /etc/fstab if a device is present there,
so you could technically have removable devices defined in /etc/fstab, but if
the fstab settings do not allow normal users to mount them (with the "user" or
"users" option), then HAL/dbus will not allow them to be mounted either.
Also note that you will need to run "/etc/rc.d/rc.messagebus reload" after
adding any users to plugdev, power, or video groups so that it re-reads the
/etc/group file.

Does that not answer your question?
In other words, if you put the partitions in /etc/fstab as you would have done in earlier releases of Slackware, *and* the /etc/fstab entries would allow you (as a normal user) to mount the partitions, then HAL will honor those settings. Therefore, if your /etc/fstab file has this:
/dev/hda /cdrom auto noauto,user,noexec,ro 0 0
/dev/usb1024 /usb2 vfat noauto,user,rw,dmask=0022,fmask=0133 0 0
then you will be able to mount your cdrom drive and/or your usb thumbdrive in KDE or Xfce (or any other HAL-aware desktop environment), but instead of mounting them to /media/whatever, they will be mounted where and with whatever options are specified in /etc/fstab.

Many thanks rworkman, now I understand the connection between hal and fstab. I never mounted as user but used kwikdisk starting with sudo. I've been confused because with the same fstab entries kde on slack 11 showed media:/mymountpoints while in slack 12 it's media:/disk.