Array CD 3, "HEAD" (and, probably, Array CD 4) hal issues

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Sat, Feb 05, 2005 at 11:34:01AM +0100, Shot (Piotr Szotkowski) wrote:

> Hello.
> 
> // Below, by "Hoary HEAD" I mean the state of archive.ubuntu.com at
> // the upgrade times; this of course differs from Array CD 3's Hoary.
> 
> I've been making my first real Ubuntu testing these days and every
> single time I have the same problem when installing Hoary's hal package.
> I'll follow-up this evening with an email full of notes, I'd just like
> to describe the hal problem, as it is the biggest headache.
> 
> First, when installing Warty and upgrading it to Hoary on my
> girlfriend's computer mid-January (a 300 MHz-ish Celeron),
> I noticed something brings it to a crawl and I have to reset
> it (hard) mid-upgrade; afterwards everything went ok.

We need more details.  What brought it to a crawl?  What did you observe,
and when?

> Since Thursday I'm having fun with my newly obtained Celeron 333 MHz on an
> Intel i440LX motherboard, and I'm seeing the same thing. I tried
> installing Warty expert and upgrading it to Hoary HEAD, Warty
> custom-expert and upgrading it to Hoary HEAD before installing
> ubuntu-base, and now I'm testing Array CD 3, both in expert and
> server-expert modes, both upgraded to Hoary HEAD and not (i.e.,
> installation just from the CD's package base).

Is this the same computer, or a different one?

> After around twelve reinstalls (last one done packet-by-packet) I've
> tracked down that the problem is with the hal package. Every time
> I install it, when the installation gets to the "Restarting system
> message bus" stage, the system slows to a crawl. It's really quite
> amazing, first I thought it just hanged hard, but no - if I gave it
> a lot of time (fifteen minutes?) it finishes the package install and
> gets back to aptitude, then repaints the aptitude window for another
> five minutes, lets me exit aptitude (another five minutes...), and
> a `sudo reboot` takes about twenty-five minutes, but actually works.
> After the reboot everything seems ok.

The usual cause for this kind of problem is a hang/slowdown when HAL
accesses the CD-ROM drive to see if a disc is present

Here's a hang: https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=3607
And a slowdown: https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4049

They may or may not be the same bug.

Please get a kernel trace using ctrl+scrolllock or alt+sysrq+t and attach it
to the appropriate bug:

http://www.ubuntu.com/wiki/DebuggingSystemCrash

-- 
 - mdz