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Re: [NOT SO BRIGHT UPDATE] Installing K3b installs HAL. Should I do it?



On Wed, 11 May 2011 20:45:12 +0000, Juan R. de Silva wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I've recently switched from Lucid to Squeeze on my workstation. So, far
> I'm quite happy with the move but I'm still on a learning curve.
> 
> Back in Ubuntu I used to use K3b in GNOME since I definitely prefer it
> to Brasero. Yesterday I tried to installed K3b in Squeeze and I noticed
> that HAL would be installed with it as a dependency.  Since I was not
> sure on HAL I cancelled the installation until clarification.
> 
> I'm not familiar in depth neither with udev nor HAL. But AFAIK HAL was
> deprecated and part of its functionality now is build into udev.
> 
> What would be the consequences of HAL being installed on my fresh
> squeeze system, if any?  Would HAL conflict with udev in any way?
> Wouldn't installation of HAL degrade my fresh squeeze install?

Well, after making such a brave report about HAL on squeeze, I found that 
the reality is not so bright.

You see, I'm having here a problem with Clamav and, after installing K3b 
with HALL, I switched to deal with it. The problem with Clamav has 
nothing to do with our discussion here, and I'll make another post about 
it.

But here what I found directly related to the introduction of HAL into 
squeeze.

If you install Clamav after HAL was installed, a file /var/run/clamav/
freshclam.pid is created with root:haldaemon group:owner permissions and 
the following error is generated after installation: "ERROR: Can't save 
PID to file /var/run/clamav/freshclam.pid: Permission denied"

But if you install Clamav on a fresh squeeze without HAL installed, the 
ownership of the same file is root:clamav instead, and Clamav does 
produce this error.

While the problem is really a small one, one can always change the owner 
of the file, it shows that presence of HAL in the system might 
potentially be root of unpredictable problems since some apps are 
confused by its presence. And I can imagine that in some instances to 
find the problem of the kind could be quite time consuming.

So, I'm not sure yet, but at least for now I probably would prefer to 
live without K3b. It's a pity though. It's a best burning app over there. 
I hope K3b developers would remove this dependency soon.



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