[kde-linux] Auto-mounting removable drives - dbus / hal problems?

[Bogus Zaba]

I have got used to the nice auto-mounting of removable media provided by 
my Suse 10.1 / KDE 3.5.1 combination. For some reason this has now 
stopped working. There are two symptoms. When I first open a KDE session 
I get the message that dbus is not running and am invited to start it by 
typing /etc/init.d/dbus start. I do as I'm told and type this into a 
console.

But when I put in a usb drive or a DVD I get no automatic message 
telling me that a device has been detected and asking me whether I want 
to open a konqi filemanager window / play a DVD or whatever. When I look 
at devices shown by the media:/ protocol , clicking on any of them 
yields the message : "Feature only available with HAL". If I look to see 
the haldaemon status, it is usually "unused", but if I start it, that 
also makes no difference.

I can manually mount these devices at any place in the tree I want (eg 
/media/someplace) but then run into permission frustrations as I only 
seem to be able to do the mounting as root and only root can then write 
to the drive.

Any ideas on how I can get the simple user's auto-mounting working again?

Thanks

Bogus