On Thu, 2005-05-05 at 06:13 -0400, Steve Snyder wrote:

I understand the the way to stop the constant polling of my CD-ROM drive (only used every few years to install the OS) is to disable the hal service. Is there any downside to disabling hal other that the lack of auto-insert notification?

Just edit /etc/hal/hald.conf and change storage_media_check_enabled and storage_automount_enabled_hint to false.