VL-Hot + HAL in VL 5.9 == one big mess

[Joe1962]

Not intending to bash hal further, but I was just checking out Intel's LessWatts.org site (http://www.lesswatts.org) and they refer to hal...

hal cdrom polling
One component of the hal daemon (hal is a core component of the various desktop environments and deals with all sorts of hardware interaction) is the part where it polls the cdrom drive regularly (as often as once every 2 seconds!) to see if the user has inserted a CD. This is used, for example, to automatically open a new window with a file browser for the CD.

Such regular polling will keep the hardware awake somewhat; the amount of power consumed depends on the exact type of CDROM drive. It also depends on the presence of the ALPM feature.

If you rarely or never insert CDs (for example because the machine in question is a server 3000 miles away), you can save some power by stopping this polling.

Current versions of hal have a special command for this:

hal-disable-polling --device /dev/scd0

Note that this obviously means that you will not get a popup window if you insert a CD after all. To enable this polling again, you can use the following command:

hal-disable-polling --device /dev/scd0 --enable-polling

Newer SATA based CDROM drives have the capability to notify the machine when a CD gets inserted, making polling not needed. Both the kernel and hal are currently undergoing development to detect and support this capability, so that no polling is needed at any time for these devices.

That last bit is very interesting to me, I will be looking into it and, if possible, add support for that in vl-hot.

[easuter]

That last bit is very interesting to me, I will be looking into it and, if possible, add support for that in vl-hot.

Yes! Someone was thinking when designing those drives.
But even older drives could have this capability if manufacturers added that to the firmware?...

[caitlyn]

What exactly does one miss by not having HAL? So far, the only absence I noted in the xfce4-no-hal package (in 5.8 standard) is that the mounted cd's and usb pendrives do not show up in Thunar.

You miss Xfce entirely.  HAL is a hard dependency in Xfce 4.4.1.  I think we can safely assume it will be in future versions as well.  If you find a way to compile the current Xfce without HAL I'm sure the developers would love to hear about it.

[Vxt]

I don't use Xfce4
According to the Thunar tarball

http://www.ca-us.xfce.org/archive/xfce-4.4.1/fat_tarballs/
Plse note the  IF statement:

Volume Management
 IF  Thunar was installed with support for HAL and the thunar-volman package is also installed, you can enable the integrated volume manager. See the section called “Management of Removable Drives and Media” for details about this

AFAIK The file Mgr itself is not mandatory to an Xfce4 install

Seems all are modularised ?

http://www.xfce.org/documentation/4.2/userguide/xfce4-components

[rbistolfi]

You miss Xfce entirely.  HAL is a hard dependency in Xfce 4.4.1.  I think we can safely assume it will be in future versions as well.  If you find a way to compile the current Xfce without HAL I'm sure the developers would love to hear about it.

I think joe1962 already did it.

http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/veclinux-5.8/fixes/xfce-4.4.0-no-hal-i586-4vl58.tlz

[Joe1962]

You miss Xfce entirely.  HAL is a hard dependency in Xfce 4.4.1.  I think we can safely assume it will be in future versions as well.  If you find a way to compile the current Xfce without HAL I'm sure the developers would love to hear about it.

I think joe1962 already did it.

http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/veclinux-5.8/fixes/xfce-4.4.0-no-hal-i586-4vl58.tlz

Actually, I only asked for it, Vec built it.

[rbistolfi]

You miss Xfce entirely.  HAL is a hard dependency in Xfce 4.4.1.  I think we can safely assume it will be in future versions as well.  If you find a way to compile the current Xfce without HAL I'm sure the developers would love to hear about it.

I think joe1962 already did it.

http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/veclinux-5.8/fixes/xfce-4.4.0-no-hal-i586-4vl58.tlz

Actually, I only asked for it, Vec built it.

Well, thanks to Vec then. About the topic, I think there is nothing to discuss anymore, since the option for disabling hal/enabling hal will be there. So if this is about personal preference now, thanks joe for vl-hot
IM_very_very_very_HO, since we use VL because it is rational and logical in the resources administration, it should stay like that. Daemons are not good in general, all but udevd, httpd and ifplugd, may be -ifconfig is just an 8 letters word  - and less daemons are always better.