I'm having a lot of trouble getting udev/hal/hotplug to behave, when I install them in a three year old Debian installation. The packages pretty much take over all hardware handling and mess up the network configuration, make my wacom tablet unusable and freeze KDE randomly on top of that. The mess it creates is IMO too much to spend a lot of time on.

I've been experimenting with pmount, which is pretty straight-forward and much easier on users who don't want to care about VendorID's and the lot.

I would like to use pmount with a package capable of automounting (preferably with KDE). Are there any alternatives left in the Linux landscape?

(I just don't see why the simple action of adding and removing external devices has turned into something so totally complex and needlessly time consuming.)

My advise: backup your files and install Etch. I know it doesn't have to, but sometimes it's better to be pragmatic and cut your loses before they grow over your head...

The system is Etch/Sid/Experimental. I just hope there is an alternative to reinstalling, which would be a lot of work as well.

I'm having doubts this is really a Etch/Sid/Experimental system, or you've just never upgraded from hotplug to udev having started from a Sarge system. My advise remains: backing up your data and start from scratch.

I don't use hotplug either, it tries to handle too much devices (usb, ide, pci, scsi, pnpisa!?). You don't need to doubt if my system is mixed either, I'm telling you it is Since it used to be Sarge and was upgraded gradually it's pretty easy to avoid all the administration needed for hotplug, udev etc.

Not necessarily true, I used to try to hold off udev, and go with hotplug because of the reports of problems with udev. I've since made the conversion, but this was some 3 months ago. Now, if the OP originally had GNOME installed, then you would be correct: GNOME has a dependency on udev as opposed to hotplug. I'm not sure about KDE, as I don't use KDE nor GNOME on my system for that matter.

udev is complex but very powerfull. One of the major change in the 2.6.
Do your problems come from udev or HAL? udev is not supposed to mount anything, its the purpose of HAL who gets notified by udev via dbus. For example, HAL keeps a record of mount options for medias.
If you have problems with HAL then use maybe use autofs? Personnaly I dislike the concept since a long time and would never go back to old mechanisms.

It might the stripped down kernel I use that is one of the causes of my troubles. I'll figure it out Although I dislike udev I realise it's currently the only way to go.

At the third attempt the pieces came together. Hopefully this will be useful to new udev users. Don't switch to udev late at night, a clear mind helps!

The most annoying was the loss of the network card. In /etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistant-net.rules my card wasn't present. I deleted the file and restarted udev (or reboot). It showed up again and the network was back.

The /dev/input/wacom node was pointing to event3, so xorg.conf had to be changed. After reloading X it worked again.

The freezing of KDE I still can't explain, but it hasn't happened again, since I got all devices working. After installing hal KDE nicely opens a window asking what to do with the plugged in device. All is cool now.

Udev is intimidating, but, at least the Debian implementation, provides a working set. I haven't written any udev rules and intend to stay as far away of it as I can. Documentation on this is pretty clear if I have to