[ale] Annoying USB mount problem on Kubuntu 9.10 SOLVED

[Charles Shapiro]

So I run my Kubuntu 9.10 box kinda weird -- specifically, I disable
the display manager and start X when I need it with the "startx"
script.
Since upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10, I've noticed that the device manager
in the toolbar stops working after a few minutes of X uptime. The
symptoms are that the toolbar freezes for a while, but the device
never mounts. I can still easily mount USB mass storage devices from
the command line ("mount -t vfat /dev/sdc1 /mnt/sd"), so the trouble
was clearly in KDE.  Further investigation showed that the trouble was
related to Dolphin -- when I run dolphin from the command line I get a
looong delay, followed by random kvetching about connecting to some
X-related gizmo:

<unknown program name>(2557)/: Communication problem with  "dolphin" ,
it probably crashed.
Error message was:  "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply" : " "Message
did not receive a reply (timeout by message bus)" "

After this error, dolphin would eventually start.

So the SOLUTION, to make a long story short, is to make sure that a
dolphin session is always running in KDE. As long as I have a session
up somewhere, everything seems to be copacetic.

I haven't seen this on google or anywhere else.

-- CHS