[gentoo-user] USB disk automatically mounting: how does it work

[Chris Stankevitz]

Hello,

Would you please explain (or refer me to a place that explains) the
mechanism by which an USB drive appears on my desktop?  I'm looking
for a level of detail like this:

When you insert a USB device, the kernel sends out a notification A.
Userland daemons such as B can catch this signal.  A file B.conf
describes what to do in response to a certain class of USB devices and
in there you will see a section for disk drives that says mount them
at location C.  Then B sends out a notification D which window
managers can catch if they want.  GNOME and others catch D and in
response put an icon on the desktop.  The reason lowly users can mount
and write to these devices is E.

PS: These topics are a blur in my mind: udev hotplug coldplug session
pam.  I suspect these words are used to fill in some of the variables
in my pseudo-description above.

Thank you,

Chris