I found what seems to be the problem, thanks to bug #131107. gparted creates the file:
/usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/gparted-disable-automount.fdi which stops any drives from automounting. I removed the file and restarted hal with "sudo /etc/init.d/hal restart" but this didn't have any effect; but after I rebooted completely, my drives now automount. Normally gparted deletes the file when it exits. I assume that (a) because gparted crashed, it didn't delete the file; (b) originally when I was rebooting, the file was flagged each time for deletion upon exit, so it didn't persist, and after reboot the drives mounted; but at some point the file became persistent and this broke automounting. Although gparted needs to stop drives from automounting (eg see bug #37768 and its duplicates), it's a bit dangerous to allow a file that disables all automounting to persist through reboots. To the end user, it just looks like automounting is broken. -- external usb disks no longer mount in gutsy https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/132349 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is the bug contact for Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
