External USB HD does not work with HAL:

Question

External USB HD does not work with HAL:
From the last 10 days the HAL auto-mount with ntfs-3g file system of my external hard drive  does not woks.
But the manual mount procedure with the command mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb* /mnt/XYZ works.
I've followed the instructions in the wiki: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HAL and the system has worked up to the last kernel or HAL update.
My fat32 usb-stick works without any problem.
If I try to open the device with KDE it appears an error popup wit this message:
TODO: have to rethink extra options
Error: kio_media_mount_helper
The log from the kernel.log is
Nov 6 22:03:16 myhost usb 5-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
Nov 6 22:03:16 myhost usb 5-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Nov 6 22:03:17 myhost Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
Nov 6 22:03:17 myhost ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
Nov 6 22:03:17 myhost Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
Nov 6 22:03:17 myhost scsi6 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Nov 6 22:03:17 myhost usb-storage: device found at 4
Nov 6 22:03:17 myhost usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
Nov 6 22:03:17 myhost usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
Nov 6 22:03:17 myhost USB Mass Storage support registered.
Nov 6 22:03:22 myhost scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access WDC WD32 00JB-00KFA0 0811 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
Nov 6 22:03:22 myhost sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 625142448 512-byte hardware sectors (320073 MB)
Nov 6 22:03:22 myhost sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
Nov 6 22:03:22 myhost sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Nov 6 22:03:22 myhost sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 625142448 512-byte hardware sectors (320073 MB)
Nov 6 22:03:22 myhost sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
Nov 6 22:03:22 myhost sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Nov 6 22:03:22 myhost sdb: sdb1
Nov 6 22:03:22 myhost sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
Nov 6 22:03:22 myhost sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
Nov 6 22:03:22 myhost usb-storage: device scan complete
and the error.log is
Nov 6 22:03:22 myhost sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Nov 6 22:03:22 myhost sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Do you have some idea ....
Bye.

Answer 1

I have done the following:
Downloaded the patched hal version.
used makepkg in /abs/local/trunk/ to create a pkg for pacman
used sudo pacman -U pkgname to install it.
used sudo nano /etc/hal/fdi/policy/preferences.fdi to create the fdi file with the following content:
saved the file and removed my ntfs entryes from fstab and rebooted. and still there is no automount off ntfs partitions.
have i done something wrong?
br fjodork
WARNING: what follows is a guide of what did work for me, I'm still in an early stage of learning linux, so please correct me if anything of what follows is wrong/dangerous/stupid. As I said, this worked for me, it's not pretty, since I was learning each step on the fly and I'm sure there are better ways to do this.
So fjodork, you seem to have done the the necessary steps, though i couldn't get it to work until i first removed hal without dependencies
pacman -Rd hal
it will give you some warning about the dependencies, ignore  it since we are reinstalling hal in a few steps.
First i tried to follow Raymano's link, obviously it showed me nothing in the browser so I thought it might be a broken link.
So I downloaded the source tarball from here http://hal.freedesktop.org/releases/hal-0.5.10.tar.gz
unpacked it changed the /tools/hal-storage-mount.c as per Milfadoodle's instructions.
at first I tried to compile directly from source, the process would finish without a glitch though after reboot nothing changed, as if hal weren't
installed, i guess there were issues with paths. anyway read on
Then repacked the source in tarball, copied it to /var/abs/extra/system/hal and modified the PKGBUILD as follows
makedepends=('pkgconfig' 'gperf')
options=('!libtool')
install=hal.install
source=(${pkgname}-${pkgver}.tar.gz #removed url so makepkg looks in the current directory for the tarball
    hal
    hal-policy.patch
    cryptsetup_location.patch
    hal-0.5.9-hide-diagnostic.patch
    ntfs3g-valid-options.patch)
md5sums=('6641c30a27c00485c6accac5110ff911' # replace with md5sum of your package's sourceball (run md5sum filename)
         '882f67668cb14a0a9e4a27ef22278027'
         '5ba8b610aa9763a5f42b9f7cbd7a86ad'
then makepkg (i had to add --asroot, don't ask why
and finally pacman -U hal-0.5.10-1-i686.pkg
another reboot and everything worked without a glitch!:D (yeah i know i still haven't got rid of the reboot mentality )
I have also put the policy files as per the wiki instructions.
PS: I know this is a dirty way to getting things done but as i said, I'm just starting
If anyone could comment/correct/explain this post I'd be more than happy, the automount issue was bothering me for about a month now (you'll say why do I need ntfs in the first place? well, I only recently switched for Linux as my primary OS, these are some relics of the M$ era