[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#480694: invoke-rc.d: initscript hal, action "stop" failed.

[Drew Parsons]

Package: hal
Version: 0.5.11-8
Severity: critical
Justification: makes unrelated software on the system (or the whole system) break

My system broke down yesterday.  It looks like the problem might be
similar to this one (#480694).  However, deleting
/var/cache/hald/fdi-cache does not help.

There are various symptoms to my problem. dbus reports hal failure, for
instance:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/dbus restart
 * Stopping network connection manager NetworkManager                    [ OK ] 
invoke-rc.d: initscript network-manager, action "stop" failed.
 * Stopping bluetooth                                                    [ OK ] 
invoke-rc.d: initscript bluetooth, action "stop" failed.
 * Stopping Hardware abstraction layer hald                              [ OK ] 
invoke-rc.d: initscript hal, action "stop" failed.
 * Stopping Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Daemon avahi-daemon                        [ OK ] 
 * Stopping system message bus dbus                                      [ OK ] 

As a result, hal is not brought back up by dbus, and therefore
network-manager cannot restore the network interface, so I'm left
without a network connection. I can restore the network manually with a manual
stop/start of dbus (restart does not work), followed by restart of hal
and then network-manager.

If I just stop hal, it returns exit code 1, indicating a bug, but
gives no diagnostic messages:
$ sudo /etc/init.d/hal stop
 * Stopping Hardware abstraction layer hald                              [ OK ] 
$ echo $?
1
$ sudo /etc/init.d/hal start
 * Starting Hardware abstraction layer hald                              [ OK ] 
$ echo $?
1
I guess these error exit states are what's causing dbus to fail?


There are some other strange matters, I don't know if they're directly
related to the hal failure.  Kernel modules (e.g. for my ethernet
card, the X11 agpgart module, the USB driver ehci-hcd which hal needs)
are no longer being loaded automatically. I've had to list them
explicitly in /etc/modules.

At the moment I cannot successfully upgrade (reinstall) hal or dbus.
Trying to reinstall the hal deb directly, for instance, gives:
$ sudo dpkg -i hal_0.5.11-8_amd64.deb (Reading database ... 347893 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace hal 0.5.11-8 (using hal_0.5.11-8_amd64.deb) ...
 * Stopping Hardware abstraction layer hald                              [ OK ] 
invoke-rc.d: initscript hal, action "stop" failed.
dpkg: warning - old pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ...
 * Stopping Hardware abstraction layer hald                              [ OK ] 
invoke-rc.d: initscript hal, action "stop" failed.
dpkg: error processing hal_0.5.11-8_amd64.deb (--install):
 subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
 * Starting Hardware abstraction layer hald                              [ OK ] 
invoke-rc.d: initscript hal, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error while cleaning up:
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 hal_0.5.11-8_amd64.deb

I think the hal failure means dbus cannot be reinstalled, and they
also cause the gnome and rhythmbox packages to break at upgrade.

Thanks for any suggestions.  I'll attach a clean copy of
/var/cache/hald/fdi-cache (cleaning meaning the one generated by a hal
restart after deleting the old fdi-cache).

Drew


-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.29-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages hal depends on:
ii  adduser                     3.110        add and remove users and groups
pn  dbus                        <none>       (no description available)
ii  hal-info                    20090309-1   Hardware Abstraction Layer - fdi f
ii  libc6                       2.9-7        GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libdbus-1-3                 1.2.12-1     simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2            0.80-3       simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libexpat1                   2.0.1-4      XML parsing C library - runtime li
ii  libgcc1                     1:4.3.3-5    GCC support library
ii  libglib2.0-0                2.20.0-2     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                  4.3.3-5      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      libvolume_id shared library
ii  lsb-base                    3.2-22       Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  mount                       2.13.1.1-1   Tools for mounting and manipulatin
ii  pciutils                    1:3.1.2-3    Linux PCI Utilities
ii  pm-utils                    1.2.4-2      utilities and scripts for power ma
ii  udev                        0.140-2      /dev/ and hotplug management daemo
ii  usbutils                    0.73-10      Linux USB utilities

Versions of packages hal recommends:
ii  eject           2.1.5+deb1+cvs20081104-5 ejects CDs and operates CD-Changer
ii  libsmbios-bin   2.0.3.dfsg-1             Provide access to (SM)BIOS informa

Versions of packages hal suggests:
pn  gnome-device-manager          <none>     (no description available)

-- no debconf information
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