[plug] Simple USB Memory Stick solution for Debian Etch

[Gavin Chester]

On Mon, 2007-11-19 at 20:10 +0900, Michael Hunt wrote:
> 
> 
> On Nov 19, 2007 2:41 PM, Kev <kdownes at tpg.com.au> wrote:

-snip-
> 
> Hmm. Well I'm not in front of the machine at the moment but it didn't
> seem to do that (hence the reason for asking the question). I did do
> the install from the XFCE iso (see URL below) so maybe there is a
> component that is in a bog standard etch install that is not in the
> XFCE one.

Ahhh, now all is revealed ;-). The whole thing hinges on your
desktop/window manager. That is, I discovered the hard way that an
identical machine running Xfce will not automount usb, but will if
started with gnome or kde for a new user session. Sometimes though you
can break it for the other window managers and have to make sure the
right packages are installed and working. This came up on another list
recently and via google I found someone said it far better than me:

"There is now a set of utilities out there called "pmount" and "hal"
which provide a more dependable interface so that GNOME and KDE can
automatically mount these things. So first, install the packages
"pmount" and "hal" (in Debian "hal" depends automatically on "udev", -
hence you will need to be running kernel 2.6 for any of this to work).
Then, you will need to add all authorized users to the group "plugdev".
Any user in this group will be able to automatically mount a USB
device."

HTH

Gavin