If an optical drive and the SATA controller support ATAPI asynchronous notification, then pressing the eject button doesn't cause HAL to unmount the disc and eject, as it should. At least it doesn't work reliably.

When I hit eject, I get something like the output below from HAL. It seems that what's happening is that HAL gets the udev notification caused by the AN from the drive, and triggers hald-probe-storage. However, it seems like hald-probe-storage is missing the code from hald-addon-storage (which normally does media polling) to check if the eject button has been pressed using GET EVENT STATUS NOTIFICATION. Then hald-probe-storage interprets the change as meaning media was inserted, not that eject was pressed.

This output is with HAL 0.5.12, but looking at the code in current git, it appears hald-probe-storage still doesn't do eject handling.

16:27:55.338 [I] osspec.c:247: SEQNUM=1573, ACTION=change, SUBSYSTEM=scsi, DEVPATH=/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.2/host2/target2:0:0/2:0:0:0, DEVNAME=, IFINDEX=0
16:27:55.338 [I] hotplug.c:435: checking event /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.2/host2/target2:0:0/2:0:0:0
16:27:55.338 [I] hotplug.c:121: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.2/host2/target2:0:0/2:0:0:0 is a device (store)
16:27:55.338 [I] device.c:4979: refresh_dev: subsys=scsi
16:27:55.338 [D] hotplug.c:453: events queued = 0, events in progress = 0
16:27:55.338 [D] hotplug.c:458: Hotplug-queue empty now ... no hotplug events in progress
16:27:55.487 [I] osspec.c:247: SEQNUM=1574, ACTION=change, SUBSYSTEM=block, DEVPATH=/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.2/host2/target2:0:0/2:0:0:0/block/sr0, DEVNAME=/dev/sr0, IFINDEX=0
16:27:55.487 [I] hotplug.c:435: checking event /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.2/host2/target2:0:0/2:0:0:0/block/sr0
16:27:55.487 [I] blockdev.c:1707: block_change: sysfs_path=/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.2/host2/target2:0:0/2:0:0:0/block/sr0
16:27:55.487 [I] blockdev.c:1771: blockdev_rescan_device: udi=/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/storage_model_iHAS324___A
16:27:55.488 [D] hotplug.c:453: events queued = 0, events in progress = 0
16:27:55.488 [D] hotplug.c:458: Hotplug-queue empty now ... no hotplug events in progress
Run started hald-probe-storage (20000) (0) 
!  full path is '/usr/libexec/hald-probe-storage', program_dir is '/usr/libexec'
woohoo
[5847]: 16:27:55.490 [D] probe-storage.c:157: Doing probe-storage for /dev/sr0 (bus pci) (drive_type cdrom) (udi=/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/storage_model_iHAS324___A) (--only-check-for-fs==1)
[5847]: 16:27:55.491 [D] probe-storage.c:208: Doing open ("/dev/sr0", O_RDONLY | O_NONBLOCK)
[5847]: 16:27:55.491 [D] probe-storage.c:214: Returned from open(2)
[5847]: 16:27:55.496 [D] probe-storage.c:358: Checking for optical disc on /dev/sr0
[5847]: 16:27:55.496 [D] probe-storage.c:366: Doing open ("/dev/sr0", O_RDONLY | O_NONBLOCK | O_EXCL)
[5847]: 16:27:55.497 [D] probe-storage.c:378: Open failed - Device Busy
[5847]: 16:27:55.497 [D] probe-storage.c:387: Doing open ("/dev/sr0", O_RDONLY | O_NONBLOCK)
[5847]: 16:27:55.498 [D] probe-storage.c:396: PROBE HAS EXCLUSIVE LOCK ON CDROM
[5847]: 16:27:55.499 [D] probe-storage.c:438: media size = 437039104
[5847]: 16:27:55.499 [D] probe-storage.c:446: PROBE CLOSED LOCK ON CDROM
16:27:55.500 [I] hald_dbus.c:1342: storage.cdrom.read_speed -> 8468
16:27:55.500 [I] hald_dbus.c:1342: storage.cdrom.write_speed -> 1
16:27:55.500 [I] hald_dbus.c:1366: storage.removable.media_available -> True
16:27:55.500 [I] hald_dbus.c:1350: storage.removable.media_size -> 437039104
pid 5847: rc=2 signaled=0: /usr/libexec/hald-probe-storage
16:27:55.500 [I] blockdev.c:1727: hald-probe-storage --only-check-for-media returned 2 (exit_type=0)
16:27:55.500 [D] hotplug.c:453: events queued = 0, events in progress = 0
16:27:55.500 [D] hotplug.c:458: Hotplug-queue empty now ... no hotplug events in progress