HAL Error - Thunar-volman / USB Hard Drive

Question

On my last arch setup, I installed hal,gamin, thunar and thunar-volman.  I could then plug in my usb HD and when U turned it on it would mount. I could then read and write to it as a user.  This time when I installed the same programs, added hal to my rc.conf, added my user to groups storage and optical, and plug in my drive, I get an error that says
A security policy in place prevents this sender from sending this message to this recipient, see message bus configuration file (rejected message had interface "org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume" member "Mount" error name "(unset)" destination "org.freedesktop.Hal").
fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80025280000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x562c2a8b
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 9729 78148161 7 HPFS/NTFS
Disk /dev/sdb: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x39473947
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 9 72292 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 10 42 265072+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb3 43 1190 9221310 83 Linux
/dev/sdb4 1191 30401 234637357+ 83 Linux
Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0dde34f3
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 60801 488384001 83 Linux
blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID="C81886E81886D53A" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sdb1: UUID="638d081d-a3c7-4df9-88b6-6ee99085c55c" TYPE="ext2"
/dev/sdb2: TYPE="swap" UUID="ca1a0f1d-78fc-4dfc-b2c2-c82e063d0fbb"
/dev/sdb3: UUID="8d2ef431-b599-4c58-913f-781d96d8036d" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sdb4: UUID="ae11e87d-57d4-4016-a839-955ee76c1e96" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sdc1: UUID="196c625c-f949-4889-b1e1-fec7d9f5da22" TYPE="ext3" SEC_TYPE="ext2"
mount
/dev/sdb3 on / type ext3 (rw)
none on /dev type ramfs (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/sdb1 on /boot type ext2 (rw)
/dev/sdb4 on /home type ext3 (rw)
If I plug the drive in and do a su -c 'mount /dev/sdc1 /home/justin/backup' it mounts fine to /home/justin/backup
I dont know if I am in the wrong group or I need to add the drive to my /etc/fstab . I googled the error, and it seems to give me a bunch of hits, but all relating to cdroms and kde bugs.  I tried to post any relevant commands I could think of, if their is anything else needed, please let me know.  Thanks, Justin

Answer 1

device descriptor read/64, error -110
I just got that same error message (but not some of the others you have) after a system update to kernel 3.4.3-1-ARCH. This happens for me when using a (slow) USB drive... but only under a heavy read/write load. I'd never had this problem before using the same applications and hardware.
So I poked around in the kernel source code. That message occurs when the kernel tries to send a Control Message to a USB device, but the operation times out. But... you can change the timeout value.
If you do a "modinfo usbcore", you'll see that one it's parameters is "initial_descriptor_timeout" and it defaults to 5000 milliseconds (5 seconds)... which is forever in the kernel world, but like I said, I've got a slow USB flash drive... and there's a comment in the code that one particular device needs a 10 second timeout.
So I'm going to try a larger value.
You can change it temporarily by entering "echo -n {some-value} > /sys/module/usbcore/parameters/initial_descriptor_timeout" with root authority.
Or permanently, in a file in the /etc/modprobe.d directory and put an "options" line in it... see "man modprobe.d".