Package: hal Version: 0.5.11-1 Severity: critical Justification: breaks unrelated software
...which causes dpkg to err out, halting the upgrade process. Since neither dpkg or upgrading explicitly depends on hal, its failure is breaking unrelated software/processes. Investigation reveals that /var/run/hal/hald.pid has disappeared, but hald is still running. Manually recreating the PID file then re-attempting to configure hal gets me the same result, specifically: $ ps aux ... 111 1949 0.0 0.3 4964 1972 ? Ss May09 0:01 /usr/sbin/hald ... $ cat > /var/run/hal/hald.pid 1949 [ctrl-d] $ dselect ... running dpkg --pending --configure ... Setting up hal (0.5.11-1) ... Reloading system message bus config...done. Starting Hardware abstraction layer: haldinvoke-rc.d: initscript hal, action "start" failed. dpkg: error processing hal (--configure): subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: hal dpkg --configure returned error exit status 1. Press <enter> to continue. $ ps aux ... 111 1949 0.0 0.3 4964 1972 ? Ss May09 0:01 /usr/sbin/hald ... $ ls -l /var/run/hal total 0 Most likely we are being bitten by a start-stop-daemon bug and you may want to see how the exim Maintainer worked around the problem. IIRC, you can not assume that start-stop-daemon (perhaps via invoke-rc.d) will actually stop the process! s-s-d will send the signal, but it is up to you to ensure the process has actually stopped before attempting to restart it if starting will fail when the process is already running. Note: on this system (1GHz PIII, 512M RAM) /usr is an NFS mount, which is pretty much the only difference between it and the two other systems where hal upgrades cleanly. "killall hald" then "dpkg --configure --pending" works around the problem. - Bruce P.S. Starting Hardware abstraction layer: haldinvoke-rc.d: initscript hal, should be Starting Hardware abstraction layer: hald invoke-rc.d: initscript hal, i.e., you are missing a newline char somewhere -- System Information: Debian Release: lenny/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.24-onegee (PREEMPT) Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Versions of packages hal depends on: ii adduser 3.107 add and remove users and groups ii dbus 1.2.1-2 simple interprocess messaging syst ii hal-info 20080508-1 Hardware Abstraction Layer - fdi f ii libc6 2.7-10 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii libdbus-1-3 1.2.1-2 simple interprocess messaging syst ii libdbus-glib-1-2 0.74-4 simple interprocess messaging syst ii libexpat1 1.95.8-4 XML parsing C library - runtime li ii libgcc1 1:4.3.0-4 GCC support library ii libglib2.0-0 2.16.3-2 The GLib library of C routines ii libhal-storage1 0.5.11-1 Hardware Abstraction Layer - share ii libhal1 0.5.11-1 Hardware Abstraction Layer - share ii libsmbios1 0.13.13-1 Provide access to (SM)BIOS informa ii libstdc++6 4.3.0-4 The GNU Standard C++ Library v3 ii libusb-0.1-4 2:0.1.12-11 userspace USB programming library ii libvolume-id0 0.114-2 libvolume_id shared library ii lsb-base 3.2-12 Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip ii mount 2.13.1.1-1 Tools for mounting and manipulatin ii pciutils 1:3.0.0-3 Linux PCI Utilities ii pm-utils 1.1.0-1 utilities and scripts for power ma ii udev 0.114-2 /dev/ and hotplug management daemo ii usbutils 0.73-7 Linux USB utilities Versions of packages hal recommends: ii eject 2.1.5-7 ejects CDs and operates CD-Changer pn libsmbios-bin <none> (no description available) -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]