Ubuntu's hal and console

[Cody]

I have an implementation of approximately 100 Ubuntu 7.10 machines 
authenticated via LDAP that are incapable of mounting USB storage via 
Gnome.  After much research I have tracked this down to a hal issue not 
being able to determine who is at the console.  Work arounds I have 
tried include - pam_group: Which does not work because hal is not able 
to obtain the group information from pam_group and so not believing that 
my logged in users are part of the plugdev group.  I can add users to 
the local group file and hal will believe this, but these are mostly 
computer lab boxes and so not realistic to add 1000s of users to each 
boxes local group file. Changing the line in 
'/etc/dbus-1/system.d/hal.conf' that is at_console="true" to "false", 
functions but also gives users logged in via VNC the ability to mount a 
console users USB drive.  Installing pam_console is not an option.  I 
have changed the group policy in hal.conf from plugdev to a group 
defined in our LDAP configuration and that makes mounting possible but 
still causes the same behavior as changing at_console to false. 
ConsoleKit is installed but no where can I find and configuration files 
for it nor does anything in the hal.conf reference it.  Any ideas?

--Thanks
Cody


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Cody Herriges (Ody) - CLAW-1 - TheCat
Portland State University - Phone: (503)725-5420
Email: support at cat.pdx.edu/ody at cat.pdx.edu
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