Package: hal Version: 0.5.11-8 Severity: important Tags: patch The HAL Daemon will fail to start if the /var/cache/hald directory does not exist. Apparently, the HAL code doesn't attempt to automatically create the directory, but simply errors out and dies when it is unable to locate the /var/cache/hald/fdi-cache~ file. I dug around on Google, but didn't find much that would actually explain this particular behavior. I've thus attached a patch specific to the Debian init scripts in /etc/init.d to have the script for hal check for this cache folder, and create it if it is missing. If this needs a more upstream fix, please let me know.
A common example of this is when booting diskless workstations, and mounting their root filesystems over NFS. Any packages that explicitly require hald to be running will fail to work, because hald itself will fail to start, especially if the NFS root is mounted read-only. In my specific case, I need the pcscd daemon to run to provide smart-card services on the diskless workstations for user authentication, and pcscd looks for a running HAL daemon, and fails if one is not found. -- System Information: Debian Release: 5.0.3 APT prefers stable APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-2-xen-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages hal depends on: ii adduser 3.110 add and remove users and groups ii dbus 1.2.1-5+lenny1 simple interprocess messaging syst ii hal-info 20080508+git20080601-1 Hardware Abstraction Layer - fdi f ii libc6 2.7-18 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii libdbus-1-3 1.2.1-5+lenny1 simple interprocess messaging syst ii libdbus-glib-1-2 0.76-1 simple interprocess messaging syst ii libexpat1 2.0.1-4 XML parsing C library - runtime li ii libgcc1 1:4.3.2-1.1 GCC support library ii libglib2.0-0 2.16.6-2 The GLib library of C routines ii libhal-storage1 0.5.11-8 Hardware Abstraction Layer - share ii libhal1 0.5.11-8 Hardware Abstraction Layer - share ii libsmbios2 2.0.3.dfsg-1 Provide access to (SM)BIOS informa ii libstdc++6 4.3.2-1.1 The GNU Standard C++ Library v3 ii libusb-0.1-4 2:0.1.12-13 userspace USB programming library ii libvolume-id0 0.125-7+lenny3 libvolume_id shared library ii lsb-base 3.2-20 Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip ii mount 2.13.1.1-1 Tools for mounting and manipulatin ii pciutils 1:3.0.0-6 Linux PCI Utilities ii pm-utils 1.1.2.4-1 utilities and scripts for power ma ii udev 0.125-7+lenny3 /dev/ and hotplug management daemo ii usbutils 0.73-10 Linux USB utilities Versions of packages hal recommends: ii eject 2.1.5+deb1-4 ejects CDs and operates CD-Changer pn libsmbios-bin <none> (no description available) Versions of packages hal suggests: pn gnome-device-manager <none> (no description available) -- no debconf information
hal-fdi.patch
Description: hal-fdi.patch
