hal won't start

[Kiwi4321]

hal won't start, I've tried a number of suggestions found on the web but nothing has worked so far.

I can't start it manually e.g.
sudo /etc/init.d/dbus stop
sudo killall hald
sudo /etc/init.d/dbus start

stalls at trying to create the hald daemon

I tried reinstalling a number of packages but none of them will get installed, even if downloaded, since dpkg always stalls because hal isn't running.

Any suggestions on how to get hald running would be greatly appreciated.

[yulester]

Re: hal won't start

Is this a new install, or an existing one.

If existing, do you know what may have caused HAL Deamon to quit??

[The Liquidator]

Re: hal won't start

Within system settings, check system services. That will tell you which programs are configured to run, and whether they are set to run at boot. You can change things there.

[Kiwi4321]

Re: hal won't start

I can use KSysGuard to see what processes are running and yes hal is not. That is something I already knew what I can't do is start hal and without it I can't run dpkg which means I can't install or reinstall anything.

I have been using Kubuntu 2.6.24-16-generic for quite a while, I tried upgrading to 2.6.24-19 but it won't work with Nvidia graphics card. But using 2.6.24-19 in recovery mode I get the same problems i.e. I have to manually start the network and hal is not installed.

The last thing I did was install pilot-link and kpilot and try to sync with my palm pilot which didn't work. Both pilot-link and kpilot have since been purged.

[The Liquidator]

Re: hal won't start

Within the system services section of system settings can you not set it so that Hal will start at boot?

[Kiwi4321]

Re: hal won't start

No, and I can't even start it manually.

[The Liquidator]

Re: hal won't start

Before you try that have you gone into administrator mode?

What message do you get if you open a terminal and type whereis hal - if hal is installed you should get the location which is a start.

[Kiwi4321]

Re: hal won't start

I don't know how to change it without being in the Administrator mode.

Here are the results of whereis hal
$ whereis hal
hal: /etc/hal /usr/lib/hal /usr/share/hal

What do I do with this information?

[The Liquidator]

Re: hal won't start

If you navigate to /usr/lib/hal and see a load of cog icons that would suggest it is installed. Close off the file manager as there is nothing you can (or should) do from there.

Then go start/system settings/ then select the advanced tab and then system services. At the bottom right hand corner there is a button called administrator mode. Press that. You will be asked for your password. Enter it into the box and click OK. You should then be able to click on hal and check the box marked "start at boot". Do that, come out of system settings and then reboot.

Any joy?

[Kiwi4321]

Re: hal won't start

No, but thanks for showing me that window when things are working I am sure that will be better than using the terminal window.

I made sure both hal and networking were clicked to start at boot but on reboot even though both were clicked to start neither did. I guess networking relies on hal too?

hal just hangs when trying to restart, note when I do:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/dbus stop
* Stopping Hardware abstraction layer hald [ OK ]
* Stopping DHCP D-Bus daemon dhcdbd [ OK ]
* Stopping Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Daemon avahi-daemon [ OK ]
* Stopping network events dispatcher NetworkManagerDispatcher [ OK ]
* Stopping network connection manager NetworkManager [ OK ]
* Stopping system message bus dbus [ OK ]
$ sudo killall hald
hald: no process killed
$ sudo /etc/init.d/dbus start
* Starting system message bus dbus [ OK ]
* Starting network connection manager NetworkManager [ OK ]
* Starting network events dispatcher NetworkManagerDispatcher [ OK ]
* Starting Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Daemon avahi-daemon [ OK ]
* Starting DHCP D-Bus daemon dhcdbd [ OK ]
* Starting Hardware abstraction layer hald

hald hangs when trying to create daemon.

The date on the dtd.fti for hal is 2008-07-22 so should be okay as it had been working until the other day.

[The Liquidator]

Re: hal won't start

In an earlier thread you mentioned you thought that dpkg relies on hal. May be it, maybe it doesn't. I would have thought not as hal refers to hardware.

However, I have just tried what you do and was able to restart hal. Perhaps it is broken. Apart from rebooting in recovery mode and using the dpkg option to repair packages I am at a loss what to do if you can't get on the network.

[Kiwi4321]

Re: hal won't start

I would guess dpkg relies on the system bus and dbus can't install hal so dpkg won't work, see

$ sudo dpkg --configure -a
Setting up hal (0.5.11~rc2-1ubuntu8.2) ...
* Reloading system message bus config... [ OK ]
* Starting Hardware abstraction layer hald

Anyway I can get the network to work, I am sending this via Konqueror which for some reason doesn't need hal which Firefox seems to as it won't work.

The only way I can get the network to start is to manually, in a terminal execute:

sudo dhclient3 -pf /var/run/dhclient.eth0.pid -lf /var/run/dhclient.eth0.leases eth0

that I found on the internet somewhere, no idea what it does or why it works but it does.

Any idea on how can I find out why the hal daemon can't be created?