I really need some help here udevhotplugusbusbmount etc etc. 2032

Not counting embedded systems with fixed hardware, all of my boxes running stable have hotplug. Some of them have udev, some don't, mostly depending on how old the install is (i.e. if it orginally ran woody and was upgraded to sarge it probably doesn't have udev).

Previous to recent versions of sid you could have both. In fact, udev depended on hotplug, so if you wanted udev you had to install both.

A while ago, maybe two or three months ago, memory is vague now, a decison was made to merge the functionality of hotplug into udev. A transition was made in sid which eventually would have propagated to etch. This change was incompatible with kernels ealier than some point, 2.6.12 IIRC.

Yes, that's right. Hotplug is no longer operative.

It might depend on how you do it. Apbreastude will pull in "suggested" packages by default, apt-get will not. Not sure what Synaptic or Kpackage do. But something like that could be the cause.

The new udev also conflicts with older versions of hal, but not newer ones, so that could also be the cause if this happened during an upgrade. Again, the reason is that an incompatible change was made. If you want hal with a recent udev you must also have a recent hal.

Well, I don't really understand it either and generally don't mess with it too much. But yes, you drop rule files into the appropriate directory similar to the way you do it with init scripts. It isn't quite the same since they aren't arbitrary shell scripts, but the concept is similar.

-- - Bob Hauck - A proud member of the unhinged moonbat horde.