Bug 274560

Summary:	HAL will fail if /var/cache/hald does not exist on startup.
Product:	Gentoo Linux	Reporter:	Thomas Anderson (tanderson) (RETIRED) <tanderson>
Component:	New packages	Assignee:	Freedesktop bugs <freedesktop-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Severity:	normal	CC:	dang, leio
Priority:	High
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---

Description Thomas Anderson (tanderson) (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2009-06-17 21:09:59 UTC

If HAL is started when /var/cache/hald is not present, it will die like so:

[dodo:root]~> hald --daemon=no
Runner started - allowed paths are
'/usr/libexec:/usr/lib64/hal/scripts:/usr/bin'

** (process:14320): WARNING **: Failed to initialize inotify: Function not
implemented
Run started hald-generate-fdi-cache (60000) (0)
!  full path is '/usr/libexec/hald-generate-fdi-cache', program_dir is
'/usr/libexec'
07:03:06.997 [E] create_cache.c:638: Unable to open fdi cache
'/var/cache/hald/fdi-cache~' file for writing: No such file or directory
07:03:06.997 [E] create_cache.c:707: Error generating fdi cache
pid 14322: rc=1 signaled=0: /usr/libexec/hald-generate-fdi-cache
Error binding udev_event socket: Address already in use

That originally came from bug #268375 which was fixed by changing the keepdir line. However, in the case of /var/cache being cleaned on reboot(FHS allows this, see [1]), hald will still fail because neither hald nor the init script make sure that /var/cache exists and is a directory before writing cache files.

Either HAL upstream needs to fix their behaviour regarding this case or we need to make sure in the init script that /var/cache/hald is present before spawning hald.

Comment 1 Mike Auty (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2009-06-21 20:40:21 UTC

(Gentoofan23, do please assign the bug appropriately if you can, it'll just save the wranglers a bit of time...)  5:)

Comment 2 Samuli Suominen (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2011-09-18 09:31:13 UTC

sys-apps/hal was removed from tree wrt #313389, closing as OBSOLETE