External NTFS USB drive automount

[Stew Schneider]

Kubuntu Feisty. I've got a SimpleTech 80G USB drive formatted as NTFS 
that won't automount. I'd like some suggestions.

I followed the directions at 
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/widows-ntfs-partitions-readwrite-support-made-easy-in-ubuntu-feisty.html 
and installed ntfs-config. Running it from either Gnome or KDE skips the 
"The following new partitions were detected and can be configured" 
dialog and goes directly to the "Enable Write support" dialog. Of 
course, with no mountpoint specified, no mounting gets done.

If I manually alter fstab, I can mount it, but it is accessible only to 
root, and read only. I can, however, copy the contents to my desktop as 
root.

Googling for an answer, I found:
> NTFS-config is a fat useless beast, which does a very simple thing and 
> for that it needs to install a sheetload of gnome dependencies. Nobody 
> needs it (not even Gnome users- only Ubuntu newbies may wrongly think 
> they need it because it's "simple" and "idiotproof"), removable NTFS 
> volumes can be initialized much easier:
> CODE
> sudo touch /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-ntfs-policy.fdi
> sudo nano /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-ntfs-policy.fdi
>
>
> Now copypaste to nano ( shift+insert) the following mumbojumbo:
>
> CODE
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
> <deviceinfo version="0.2">
> <!-- mount ntfs volume with the ntfs-3g driver to enable write support -->
>     <device>
>         <match key="volume.fstype" string="ntfs">
>             <match key="@block.storage_device:storage.hotpluggable" 
> bool="true">
>                 <merge key="volume.fstype" type="string">ntfs-3g</merge>
>                 <merge key="volume.policy.mount_filesystem" 
> type="string">ntfs-3g</merge>
>                 <append key="volume.mount.valid_options" 
> type="strlist">locale=</append>
>             </match>
>         </match>
>     </device>
> </deviceinfo>
>
I tried that, restarting hal with /etc/init.d/dbus restart, but the 
result was the same -- the device won't automount.

It is visible as /dev/sdb and fdisk indicates that it is HPFS/NTFS 
formatted. A MacBook laying around here correctly mounts it as a NTFS 
file system

What am I missing?

stew