[Bug 29822] hal hangs on startup

[Neil Woolford]

Public bug report changed:
https://launchpad.net/malone/bugs/29822

Comment:
Very similar problem has occured on my Dapper experimental box.  Was working fine with Flight 3, then updated 27th Jan and boot ground to a halt at the HAL stage.  Didn't wait long enough for error messages, no progress after ten minutes...
If started in recovery mode was OK until graphical login (by invoking gdm), but then an error message warned that HAL had not started and attempts to run Administration->Device Manager didn't succeed.  Desktop ran fine, but obviously not really much use without devices...

Took the step of running hald non daemon and with verbose as advised
above;  didn't crash but stopped at lines about my ZIP drive.
Disconnected ZIP drive data cable, and the system now boots fine.

Can't currently easily post the hal.txt output file due to an unrelated
network snafu, but would email or post it if this would help the
debugging process above the information in this comment.

Neil