Yep, I use vl-hot on my laptop and desktop. Since udev already provides notification when a "hot-pluggable" drive is connected, HAL really isnt necessary.
Even though vl-hot is made for VectorLinux (a Slackware derivative), its pretty straight forward to install it on Slackware.

It would be cool if DVD drives provided a signal for when the tray is opened or closed, then there would be no need to poll the drives all the time...

Whoah! Is it 2006 again?

HAL has been working fine for me since mid 2007, when it was first included in Slackware.

People need to accept it and move on. Like everything else in Slackware, you can choose to not install it if you don't like it.

Umm, not if you want X to work as it *depends* on hal libs.

One does not have to *use* it, but:

1-- killing/stopping hald before starting x (init 3 > init 4 for example) causes mouse movements to kill & restart X at the login screen
2-- If HAL is NOT installed, X won't work.
3-- One *can* stop hald AFTER logging into X, but I suppose (maybe, haven't tried it) if you log out, you're back at --1

At least, these have proven to be the case on my -current64 install.

Sasha

Always in motion, the future is. My sense with Slackware is that HAL and Udev were included when they were stable and useful. I personally like the auto-mounting feature. It wasn't a big deal to mount devices manually in Slackware 11, but not having to do so now is easier.

I really, really wish that it would work in the console. I couldn't get Ivman or Pmount to work in Slackware 12.2, and I haven't taken the time to define my devices in the fstab and create udev rules for them. This isn't a huge deal, but it's a bit of a pain.

Policykit, devicekit, what's next? As with other things in the past, my hope is that the Slackware team will move to the next big thing when it's stable and mostly bug-free.

Regards,

Well, as far I am concerned, I'm perfectly happy with hal/udev (and KDE for what it's worth, one must not have worked on Windows for a long time to consider KDE is anything alike or "copied"). It has been working for me very well with the KDE4 series, and I certainly wouldn't want to have to open an Xterm just to mount a DVD or a USB key anymore.
For me, it just works for what I expect from it and it doesn't get in the way for other things, which means I find them working very well.
And yes, I like to be able to set up udev to create the /dev/wacom link automatically for my wacom tablet, something devfs couldn't do. That's much more confortable than having to check which input event device has been chosen this time and write the proper config in xorg.conf before restarting X.

Hardly! In 2006 it was all "When is Slackware going to catch up and include HAL?"

Overall, I like HAL. The automounting is a great convenience for handling pluggable devices. Yes, I had problems with the XML format of the policy files. I needed to build an extensive custom policy file to suit the ALPS touchpad in my laptop, but now it is rock solid. (Well, except when the file was overwritten in the last round of updates!).

I will repeat that... with cadence... and melody... the next time I disable HAL...

I can see why Hal would be useful in some situations, for librarys and other institutions, where non-computer people just need to get their work done.

but personally I get the UUID of whatever device it is im trying to access, create a mount point for it in /mnt, and put that info in the fstab.

then I write a small mount script (which mounts, opens the file manager, and once the filemanager has been closed, unmounts the device). finally make a menu entry on my desktop for it.

Hopefully this way of doing it will last forever.

If Hal got replaced, I'd have to think about something else, and Im far too lazy to keep doing that. also I think I've got a fear of complexity.

I use pcmanfm in fluxbox. Plugin, open pcmanfm, device is in left pane.

Copy the file to the relevant directory in /etc/hal/fdi and then edit the copy.

See CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT in the tree. The information about disabling input hotplugging is relatively new to that file -- we had to make sure all of the relevant bits were mentioned and fixed in the tree first.

Excellent, thanks Robby, will do!
Sasha

Yep, there's new stuff in there..

I had been missing 1/3 of the server-flags options for no-HAL. Unless there's still weirdness after my next reboot, I'll assume that this missing option was the culprit.

So, customised scripts should be kept in /etc/hal/fdi. Thanks for the tip, Robby.

Either I'm too stupid for HAL or I hate it or both.

Just installed upcoming 13 and with a german notebook keyboard I'm back in 1995, functionwise.

I'll give it a try after reading up some stuff and if I don't have it up and running within this evening, HAL goes.

And the configfiles - I'm sorry, when exactly came "easy to use", "readable" and "pretty much self-explanetory" out of style?

Up until now: Annoying through and through.

From another thread:

I really just want no automounting and to be able to add devices to my fstab as I used to. I've also added the relevant lines to the ServerFlags section in xorg.conf.

I had the same issues. If I can just leave HAL how it is and still be able to mount devices manually and add them to fstab, then it won't bother me.

Thanks!