hal daemon stalls and logout shuts down computer

hedron · 05-22-2010, 04:27 PM

Two problems:

1) When my computer boots up it stalls when HAL daemon loads. This did not happen until I plugged in a defective hard drive. Anyone have any idea of how to go about fixing this?

2) If I open the session manager system setting, and untick "confirm logout" my system will shutdown instead of logging out. With the option enabled my computer logs out normally. I don't need the confirmation and find it redundant and feel like Linux is holding my hand and that's why I use linux because generally speaking I don't like an OS that wants to hold my hand, metaphorically, I mean.

I use KDE4.

mpapet · 05-24-2010, 05:07 PM

1) No answer is forthcoming without some log files. dmesg? hald? Is the bad drive still in?
2) I had this problem on Debian Testing some months ago, but Debian fixed it automagically when I applied updates.

hedron · 05-25-2010, 03:47 PM

The defective hard drive was removed after I affirmed that it was defective.

I don't notice anything in dmesg that would be of any use. syslog has this:

Code:

pnp 00:02: disabling [mem 0x00000000-0x00000fff window disabled] because it overlaps 0000:01:00.0 BAR 6 [mem 0x00000000-0x0007ffff pref]

kernel: usb 1-6: device descriptor read/64, error -1
10
last message repeated 2 times
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 5, error -110
kernel: hub 4-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 3

kdm[3463]: X server for display :0 terminated unexpectedly
kdm_greet[4947]: Cannot open default user face

I don't know if that means anything to anyone. Doesn't really mean anything to me.

Though, this is the more annoying problem that I discovered after posting my original message, as soon as lilo passes control to the kernel the keyboard is disconnected and doesn't reconnect until about 60 seconds after kde login screen loads up.

As far as the second problem goes, isn't there a location of the function that passed when I click logout, somewhere in the file system? I thought it might have been an icon, but I can't right click it.

mpapet · 05-25-2010, 04:05 PM

Disconnect all of the USB devices and try again.

How old is the PC?
What distro?
What kernel version? (uname -a)
What hardware? lspci -v

According to the message posted, it doesn't look like xorg is working either. Is that correct?

hedron · 05-25-2010, 04:43 PM

Disconnecting all usb devices then rebooted, then shutoff and connected, but had no effect.

My signature didn't show up in my original post for some reason.

Slackware 13, 2.6.34, AMD Phenom x4 955, Nvidia GTX 260, Auzentech XMeridian, Gigabyte GA-790XTA-UD4

Here is lspci -v: http://www.textdump.com/v/?k=NjM5OA==

xorg is working fine. These aren't show stopping problems, just minor annoyances.

Maybe I didn't make it clear enough. It stalls for 30 seconds at hal daemon and the keyboard/mouse don't work after lilo until about 60 seconds after the K login screen.

mpapet · 05-26-2010, 04:35 PM

Are you using a 64-bit/AMD specific kernel?

I don't think HAL is the issue. I think the things HAL monitors is the issue. Your keyboard problems suggest the kernel is having problems with your hardware. Who knows though, I could be completely wrong.

Did you unplug all the usb stuff and boot it?

What happens if you use noapic in the boot stanza? Try acpi=routeirq too. Digging around a bit, pci=nommconf is rumored to address amd issues, yours? dunno.

hedron · 05-27-2010, 12:10 AM

Well, I tried those boot options but no dice.

However, I did use dd to attempt to erase a hard drive I have (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc conv=notrunc) and now problem 1 is fixed. I don't know how that happened(?), but now fdisk nor my bios nor hdparm sees the hard drive.

Didier Spaier · 05-27-2010, 01:30 AM

Did you try with one of the kernels shipped with 13 ?

hedron · 05-27-2010, 01:56 AM

The drive was detected fine before I issued the dd command.

Knoppix 6.2 doesn't see it either.

But if I switch it to IDE mode (from AHCI) the BIOS can see it. But neither fdisk nor hdparm see it.

root@Microknoppix:/home/knoppix# hdparm -i /dev/sd[a,b]

/dev/sda:
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(identify) failed: Invalid exchange
HDIO_GET_IDENTITY failed: Invalid argument
root@Microknoppix:/home/knoppix#

That's the most I can get out of hdparm. -I shows sdb as well, but not with the second line. Otherwise, it's as if the drive didn't exist.