# To HAL or not to HAL



## aragon (Jun 27, 2009)

Hi,

I think I'm not the only Xorg user getting frustrated with Xorg 7.4 with HAL compiled into Xserver.  I really don't want Xorg ignoring my input configuration from xorg.conf and doing its own thing, so I'm thinking about recompiling xorg-server with HAL support disabled.

I'm just wondering if doing this will prevent my desktop environment from auto detecting removable disk inserts?


Thanks,
Aragon


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## androm31 (Jun 27, 2009)

Aragon,

you may have seen my post explaining how I have needed to do this to get Xorg to work - here's a few points that may help

Compiling xorg-server without hal was painless and quite quick.

You say you are concerned doing this might prevent your desktop environment from detecting inserted devices -
usb devices for instance would still display something on console when inserted (giving you a clue as to how to mount them), however these may not be visible depending on your choice of desktop environment...

I think you would see this if you leave your window manager as twm - moving on to somthing more advanced would definitely be on my job list. I can't see how to display console messages on blackbox for what it is worth.

regards


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## Oko (Jun 27, 2009)

aragon said:
			
		

> Hi,
> 
> 
> I'm just wondering if doing this will prevent my desktop environment from auto detecting removable disk inserts?


There is no connection between X server and auto mount. 
As long as you have HAL turned on you desktop environment will detect removable disks. HAL was working on FreeBSD long before it was used for X server. You just do not want X server using HAL for auto configuration.


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## Beastie (Jun 27, 2009)

WMs (e.g. Fluxbox) will generally work fine with HAL disabled, however many DEs need HAL for all H/W including mice and kbd, and will not work fine or at all without it.


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## lm8 (Jun 29, 2009)

I keep wondering just how much extra memory and CPU HAL is taking up on a low end system like the one I'm currently using.  When I tried out a few Linux distributions the machine seemed noticeably more responsive using a distribution without HAL turned on.  

There's a project used by Vector Linux that gives an alternative to HAL that's less resource intensive:
http://code.google.com/p/vxmount/
It's not integrated with Xorg, but it seemed very useful for mounting USB drives automatically.  Not sure how much of it would translate to FreeBSD, but it looked like it might work on FreeBSD as well as Linux.  Could be something interesting to add to the ports if it does work.


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## lme@ (Jun 29, 2009)

If you only want to have your USB drives automatically mounted and don't want to use HAL for it, you can take a look at Kamikaze's sysutils/automounter.


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## Beastie (Jun 29, 2009)

lm8 said:
			
		

> I keep wondering just how much extra memory and CPU HAL is taking up on a low end system like the one I'm currently using.


What kind of "low end"?
Here it's <1% CPU and 3-4% memory (10+ years old Celeron 333Mhz, 128MB RAM).




			
				lm8 said:
			
		

> When I tried out a few Linux distributions the machine seemed noticeably more responsive using a distribution without HAL turned on.


Only problem is that most (all?) DEs can't work at all without HAL.




			
				lm8 said:
			
		

> There's a project used by Vector Linux that gives an alternative to HAL


Again, what is it good for when most DEs require HAL?




			
				lm8 said:
			
		

> useful for mounting USB drives automatically


HAL does automounts too.
However I don't need programs holding my hand and doing things like that for me. I mount everything manually and this won't change any time soon. In fact, I only have HAL enabled because my DE needs it (even though it worked just fine without it years ago), and I only use it for reboot/poweroff (the only alternative being sudo).


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## aragon (Jun 29, 2009)

As someone more than capable and happy with manual mounting via command line, I gotta say it is nice to just have an icon on the desktop that I can just double click to mount.


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