Thanks for all the good suggestions. After all it looks like I may have misunderstood how the device icons should _now_ behave (appear/disappear).
It used to be that I always had auto-created icons present on desktop for the devices mentioned in my fstab (2 usbmem devices, cd reader (really a dvd reader) and a cd writer). I didn't have hal and yet I had icons, they changed after mounting these devices. Then I upgraded, icons disappeared and weren't coming back. I installed HAL and this changed nothing, even though "enable HAL backend" was on in Control Center. But by turing it off and back on I managed to get the device icons back (and crash kded). I'm pretty sure they'll be missing again the next time I log in. They also misbehave... one of the USB sticks in KDE's view has gotten in a state opposite to reality, i.e., if it's mounted and I open it, it tries to mount it again, complains and fails to open, if it ain't mounted, it shows it as mounted, doesn't mount and therefore opens as empty... very entertaining. Sorry, I'm getting off-topic. Today's big discovery (for me), though, is the following: with HAL present, hal-backend enabled, it seems the device icons are not supposed to show on desktop unless removable media really are inserted in the respective devices. When I do insert something, an icon tends to show up. Can't swear that it happened 100% of the time, but it did happen most of the time. I'll keep an eye on these things now. I had been so sure that the icons always have to be present that I hadn't actually tried inserting anything. Anyway, thanks very much for your help. Martins Krikis -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
