[Leaplist] HAL initialization problem with kernel 2.6.15

[Kyle Gonzales]

Andrei,

Have you checked to see if there are any updates for gNewSense that
might help here?  Any kernel errata specifically?

On Wed, 2007-07-18 at 20:32 -0400, andrei raevsky wrote:
> Dear friends,
> 
> While I am moderately competent is the use of GNU/Linux I am very much
> a Linux kernel ignoramous, so please bear with me through my maybe
> illiterate question.
> 
> First, I probably would need to specify that I am running gNewSense, a
> 100% free version of Ubunutu on my machine.  As far as I know, the
> fact that this is gNewSense and not Ubuntu should make no difference
> to my issue. 
> 
> I have noticed that gNewSense has a somewhat less than stellar uptime.
> On my computer (which runs: Linux gNewSenseBox2 2.6.15-28-386 #1
> PREEMPT Thu May 24 19:18:47 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux) I need to reboot
> about once every 5 days due to the gradual instability of the
> applications I mostly run (Epiphany, OpenOffice, Nautilus, Xterm,
> GNOME).  I noticed that when a look at the process list there are many
> sleeping instances of applications which I had quitted which are still
> running.  For example, after a while Epiphany crashes and cannot be
> restarted until I reboot.  The last time I re-booted I got a message
> during the loading of the GNOME desktop's windows manager (MetaCity I
> think) which said "failed to initialize HAL" (or something very
> similar).  Assuming that this was the hardware abstraction layer
> deamon I tried both lauching "hald" and "hald --deamon=yes" form the
> console but did not see it in 'top'.  I took a look at the "messages"
> log and here is what I found: 
> 
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000] Process hald
> (pid: 5350, threadinfo=cdba4000 task=cdbc8a70)
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000] Stack:
> 5e73365b cdba4000 dffb4220 cdba5e80 00000009 d6d8c025 cdba5e74
> cdba5f18
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000]
> cdba5e80 dffb4220 c016e17c dff321a0 cdba5e74 d6d8c02e cdba5e74
> 5e73365b
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000]
> dff2c6e0 c016e9a4 cdba5f18 cdba5e74 cdba5e80 cdba4000 cdba4000
> cdba4000
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000] Call Trace:
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000]  [do_lookup
> +28/160] do_lookup+0x1c/0xa0
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [ 17180049.712000]
> [__link_path_walk+1956/4064] __link_path_walk+0x7a4/0xfe0
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000 ]
> [link_path_walk+69/208] link_path_walk+0x45/0xd0
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000]
> [current_fs_time+68/112] current_fs_time+0x44/0x70
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000]  [dput
> +269/704] dput+0x10d/0x2c0
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000]
> [mntput_no_expire+28/144] mntput_no_expire+0x1c/0x90
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000]  [path_lookup
> +131/352] path_lookup+0x83/0x160
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [ 17180049.712000]  [__user_walk
> +35/64] __user_walk+0x23/0x40
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000]  [vfs_lstat
> +20/80] vfs_lstat+0x14/0x50
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000]
> [current_fs_time+68/112] current_fs_time+0x44/0x70
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000]  [dput
> +269/704] dput+0x10d/0x2c0
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000]
> [mntput_no_expire+28/144] mntput_no_expire+0x1c/0x90
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [ 17180049.712000]  [sys_lstat64
> +17/64] sys_lstat64+0x11/0x40
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000]  [filp_close
> +59/128] filp_close+0x3b/0x80
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000]  [sys_close
> +97/176] sys_close+0x61/0xb0
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000]  [syscall_call
> +7/11] syscall_call+0x7/0xb
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000] Code: c0 8b 15
> 30 ba 40 c0 8d 04 82 ba 00 e0 ff ff 21 e2 ff 42 14 8b 18 85 db 74 5b
> 89 54 24 04 eb 0b 90 8d 74 26 00 89 c3 85 c0 74 4a <8b> 03 0f 18 00 90
> 8d 6b f4 8b 34 24 3b 75 18 75 e9 8b 74 24 2c
> Jul 16 19:50:01 gNewSenseBox2 kernel: [17180049.712000]  <6>note:
> hald[5350] exited with preempt_count 1 
> 
> The last line seems to indicate that hald exited with an error.
> 
> Should I ignore all this insofar as the computer seems to be running
> ok, or is there something I need to do about all this.  Should I worry
> about hald?  Why is it that I have, after a couple of days, plenty of
> sleeping processes? 
> 
> I just noticed that the problem only occurs with I log in as user
> "andrei" - other user accounts do not have he same problem.  I further
> noticed that my USB flash memory peripherals are not mounting
> automatically anymore.  I can still do it manually, but this GNOME
> convenience is now lost. 
> 
> What do I need to reset/edit/correct in my account config to have HAL
> initialized?
> 
> Should I reintall HAL somehow?
> 
> Thanks for any help,
> 
> Many thanks for any advice/pointers!
> 
> Andrei 
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-- 
Kyle Gonzales <kyle.gonzales at gmail.com>
Tech blog at http://techiebloggiethingie.blogspot.com/