Chris G cl@isbd.net wrote: [...]
Part of the trouble is that looking for USB and automount on Google comes up with lots of stuff about automount and that's a different beast altogether.
I have fathomed out that it's something to do with HAL and udev. If I need to go and edit new entries into /etc/udev/rules.d then so be it but I suspect there's simpler, higher level ways of doing it. [...]
I wouldn't do it at a higher level - filesystems are a low-level task and should be available to the whole system, not just GNOME applications or whatever.
My udev rule for one USB stick is:-
ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="sd*[0-9]", ENV{ID_SERIAL}=="0930_USB_Flash_Memory_0B70F57172221A70", RUN+="/sbin/mount /Mount/USB-Blue1"
(all on one line, ID_SERIAL from /dev/disk/by-id when it's connected)
The tricky part is unmounting automatically. The system doesn't know when you've finished using it. automount or amd can unmount things after a period of non-use if you want - I just try to remember for some of my devices. Others have a RUN command that sync's the USB stick and a directory on the main filesystem, then umounts. Good for backup of the stick and avoids the umount problem.
Hope that helps,