Well, I screwed up. HAL, floppy icon, and mounting problems...halp?

Question

Arch running Xfce here.
The other day I tried to mount an external hard drive by just plugging it in.  It wouldn't work (obviously), so I Googled a solution and used it.  Problem is, now I can't remember what I did, and I'm having problems.  I think I may have messed with some conf files...
First, the floppy icon on my desktop won't go away unless I tweak a setting that would also stop external hard drives from appearing on the desktop (which I would like to keep).
Second, when I plug in my external hard drive, it no longer appears.
Third, HAL won't start.
I know that's not much to work with, but where can I start trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it?

Answer 1

Ok, managed to reinstall HAL, but I still can't access my hard drive.  I had a new error when trying to open the external hard drive by double-clicking the desktop icon: "org.freedesktop.hal.storage.mount-removable no <-- (action, result)."  I managed to get rid of that error by following the advice here: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 05#p506905 and here: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 38#p585338.  Now when I try to access the drive I get a permission denied error.  Trying to change the permissions so that my user account can access the drive (with chmod or sudo thunar) results in the error "Operation not supported" for every single file on the drive.  What am I missing?
/etc/dbus-1/system.d/hal.conf
<!DOCTYPE busconfig PUBLIC
"-//freedesktop//DTD D-BUS Bus Configuration 1.0//EN"
"http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/dbus/1.0/busconfig.dtd">
<busconfig>
<!-- This configuration file specifies the required security policies
for the HAL to work. -->
<!-- Only root or user hal can own the HAL service -->
<policy user="hal">
<allow own="org.freedesktop.Hal"/>
</policy>
<policy user="root">
<allow own="org.freedesktop.Hal"/>
</policy>
<!-- Allow anyone to invoke methods on the Manager and Device interfaces -->
<policy context="default">
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.Hal"
send_interface="org.freedesktop.DBus.Introspectable"/>
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.Hal"
send_interface="org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" />
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.Hal"
send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device"/>
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.Hal"
send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Manager"/>
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.Hal"
send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.CPUFreq"/>
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.Hal"
send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.DockStation"/>
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.Hal"
send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.KillSwitch"/>
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.Hal"
send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.KeyboardBacklight"/>
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.Hal"
send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.LaptopPanel"/>
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.Hal"
send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Leds"/>
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.Hal"
send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.LightSensor"/>
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.Hal"
send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Storage"/>
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.Hal"
send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Storage.Removable"/>
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.Hal"
send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.SystemPowerManagement"/>
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.Hal"
send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume"/>
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.Hal"
send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.Crypto"/>
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.Hal"
send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.WakeOnLan"/>
</policy>
<policy group="power">
<allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.SystemPowerManagement"/>
<allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.LaptopPanel"/>
</policy>
<policy group="storage">
<allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume"/>
<allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.Crypto"/>
</policy>
</busconfig>
/etc/PolicyKit/PolicyKit.conf
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!-- -*- XML -*- -->
<!DOCTYPE pkconfig PUBLIC "-//freedesktop//DTD PolicyKit Configuration 1.0//EN"
"http://hal.freedesktop.org/releases/PolicyKit/1.0/config.dtd">
<!-- See the manual page PolicyKit.conf(5) for file format -->
<config version="0.1">
<match action="org.freedesktop.hal.storage.mount-removable">
<match user="root">
<return result="yes"/>
</match>
<match user="harris">
<return result="yes"/>
</match>
</match>
<match action="org.freedesktop.hal.storage.mount-fixed">
<match user="root">
<return result="yes"/>
</match>
<match user="harris">
<return result="yes"/>
</match>
</match>
</config>
/usr/share/PolicyKit/policy/org.freedesktop.hal.storage.policy
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE policyconfig PUBLIC
"-//freedesktop//DTD PolicyKit Policy Configuration 1.0//EN"
"http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/PolicyKit/1.0/policyconfig.dtd">
<!--
Policy definitions for HAL's drives/media mechanims.
Copyright (c) 2007 David Zeuthen <[email protected]>
HAL is licensed to you under your choice of the the Academic Free
License Version 2.1, or the GNU General Public License version 2. Some
individual source files may be under the GPL only. See COPYING for
details.
-->
<policyconfig>
<action id="org.freedesktop.hal.storage.mount-fixed">
<description>Mount file systems from internal drives.</description>
<message>System policy prevents mounting internal media</message>
<defaults>
<allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>
<allow_active>auth_admin_keep_always</allow_active>
</defaults>
</action>
<action id="org.freedesktop.hal.storage.mount-removable">
<description>Mount file systems from removable drives.</description>
<message>System policy prevents mounting removable media</message>
<defaults>
<allow_inactive>yes</allow_inactive>
<allow_active>yes</allow_active>
</defaults>
</action>
<action id="org.freedesktop.hal.storage.unmount-others">
<description>Unmount file systems mounted by other users.</description>
<message>System policy prevents unmounting media mounted by other users</message>
<defaults>
<allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>
<allow_active>auth_admin_keep_always</allow_active>
</defaults>
</action>
<action id="org.freedesktop.hal.storage.eject">
<description>Eject removable media.</description>
<message>System policy prevents ejecting removable media</message>
<defaults>
<allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>
<allow_active>yes</allow_active>
</defaults>
</action>
<action id="org.freedesktop.hal.storage.crypto-setup-fixed">
<description>Set up decryption for encrypted fixed storage devices.</description>
<message>System policy prevents accessing encrypted fixed media</message>
<defaults>
<allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>
<allow_active>auth_admin_keep_always</allow_active>
</defaults>
</action>
<action id="org.freedesktop.hal.storage.crypto-setup-removable">
<description>Set up decryption for encrypted removable storage devices.</description>
<message>System policy prevents accessing encrypted removable media</message>
<defaults>
<allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>
<allow_active>yes</allow_active>
</defaults>
</action>
</policyconfig>
/etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
none /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cd auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
/dev/dvd /media/dvd auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/fl auto user,noauto 0 0
UUID=5dfdafa0-1268-4b5a-9901-0714929f8674 /boot ext2 defaults 0 1
UUID=cd8aac23-3f80-4320-afb6-3685c95ea357 / ext4 defaults 0 1
UUID=dc8c641e-82d5-405d-8240-a3382c0176cb swap swap defaults 0 0
UUID=f5546047-5431-4992-90bf-317251e4e8ad /home ext4 defaults 0 1