More trouble with automounting using hald in Gnome2-2.18.0

[Dr. Gary E. RAFE]

Joe Marcus Clarke <marcus at freebsd.org> wrote:
!Upgrade to hal-0.5.8-20070403 first.  In fact, update all ports to the 
!latest first.  A lot of bugs have been fixed since the first GNOME 2.18 
!package set was uploaded to MarcusCom.

A quick report regarding my results with hal-0.5.8.20070403
built from ports on a Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100 running 6.2-R.

Almost all of my umass-based devices "just worked":

 * SanDisk Cruzer Micro 256MB flash drive
 * Lexar Media JumpDrive Sport 128MB flash drive
 * Kingston DataTraveler U3 1GB flash drive
   Note: Mounts as ISO CD device on /dev/cd1, ignores FAT32 fs at /dev/da0s1
 * IOGear Pocket Drive Model GFR202SD SD Media reader
 * Archos Jukebox Recorder 20 V2 MP3 player/recorder
 * iRiver iHP-120 MP3/Ogg player/recorder

The one device that refuses to connect is an Archos Gmini XS200,
which runs the Archos firmware.

On my first try, Gnome returned the ERROR Window: Cannot mount volume.
Error _org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.PermissionDeniedByPolicy_.
Details:
hal-storage-fixed-mount refused uid 1xxx

After adding my local users to
/usr/local/etc/PolicyKit/privilege.d/hal-storage-fixed-mount.privilege,
Gnome returns the ERROR Window: Cannot mount volume.
Error _org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.UnknownError_.
Details:
An unexpected error occured

My USB connection experience with this Archos has been mixed.
It works OK on the FreeBSD I use daily,
but I usually need to wait a few seconds before /dev/da?
shows up after connecting it.

I tried to connect it to Solaris box running Solaris 10
last year, but it refused to automount (USB flash drives
worked fine, as did the Archos V2 noted above).

dmesg(8) on my daily box running 6.1-R reports:

umass1: ARCHOS Gminixs, rev 2.00/1.50, addr 5
umass1: Get Max Lun not supported (STALLED)
da1 at umass-sim1 bus 1 target 0 lun 0
da1: <USB-HS HTC426020G7CE00 0.01> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-0 device 
da1: 1.000MB/s transfers
da1: 19077MB (39070080 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 2432C)

I offer this as a data point, since I'm looking to part
with this particular bit of hardware given that the Archos
firmware is lame, and the Rockbox porting effort for the
Gmini appears to be all-but-dead
(which is a shame, since it's such a nifty
little piece of hardware).

Thanks for the pointers. --Gary
--
Dr Gary E RAFE: drgerlists at gmail dot com