Halevt - ArchWiki

# Halevt

This document describes a method to configure halevt and traydevice in order to mount removable media.

## Installation

First you need to install halevtAUR[broken link: archived in aur-mirror] and traydeviceAUR[broken link: archived in aur-mirror] from AUR.

## Configuration

After that you need to install a halevt config in `~/.halevt/`:

    $ cp /usr/share/halevt/examples/umount_from_tray-gtkdialog.xml ~/.halevt/traydevice.xml
    $ vim ~/.halevt/traydevice.xml

Edit the relevant part into

    <halevt:Device match="&MOUNTABLE;">
     <halevt:Insertion exec="traydevice $hal.udi$"/>
     <halevt:OnInit exec="traydevice $hal.udi$"/>
    </halevt:Device>

Or if you want it to automatically mount when plugging in then edit into

    <halevt:Device match="&MOUNTABLE;">
     <halevt:Insertion exec="halevt-mount -u $hal.udi$ &amp; traydevice $hal.udi$"/>
     <halevt:OnInit exec="halevt-mount -u $hal.udi$ &amp; traydevice $hal.udi$"/>
    </halevt:Device>

Next you need to edit the `default.xml` file of traydevice and change it to use halevt-mount instead of pmount-hal.

    $ cp /usr/share/traydevice/default.xml ~/.config/traydevice/
    $ vim ~/.config/traydevice/default.xml

Edit the relevant part into

    <menuitem icon="gtk.STOCK_ADD" text="mount">
     <!- - execute command pmount-hal, passing it hal udi of managed device -->
     <command executable="halevt-mount">
      <arg>-u</arg>
      <ref>info.udi</ref>

and

    <!- - execute command pumount, passing it device node from hal property -->
    <menuitem icon="gtk.STOCK_REMOVE" text="umount">
     <command executable="halevt-umount">
      <arg>-u</arg>
      <ref>info.udi</ref>

Finally you need to make halevt start when you login to X. Just add halevt to `~/.config/openbox/autostart` if you are using Openbox, or `~/.config/awesome/rc.lua` for Awesome.

## Tips and Tricks

It is better to start halevt individually per user rather than as a system daemon since it might conflict with other volume manager.

## Alternatives

Instead of halevt you can use another program based on UDisks - UDisksEvt. With the most recent version of Traydevice you can setup a complete hal-less (hal is deprecated after all) automounting system. UDisksEvt example configuration file already contains appropriate setup for Traydevice, so it should work out-of-the-box.

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