[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#550973: hald fails to start if /var/cache/hald doesn't exist (needed for fdi-cache)

[Joshua Kinard]

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
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