Segfault in hald startup (hald/linux/devices.c)

[Dave Martin]

Binary package hint: hal

Hald segfaults when trying to start up on my platform (a Freescale i.MX51 based Babbage platform). I rebuilt with debug enabled, and tracked the problem to deferencing a garbage pointer in hald/linux/devices.c:leds_add(). A proposed fix is attached, but I don't know much about the internals of hald, so in should be sanity-checked by someone who understands the details.

The patch at least allows hald to start up stably enough so that e.g., Xorg will run.

Details
---------

Source package is hal (0.5.12~rc1+git20090120-0ubuntu1)
Architecture is armel

+ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu jaunty (development branch)
Release: 9.04

+ apt-cache policy hal
hal:
  Installed: 0.5.12~rc1+git20090120-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 0.5.12~rc1+git20090120-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 0.5.12~rc1+git20090120-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://ports.ubuntu.com jaunty/main Packages
        500 http://vmware-ubuntu-hardy-davem.cambridge.arm.com. jaunty/main Pacs
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Here's what happens when hald tries to start:

+ dpkg --pending --configure
Setting up hal (0.5.12~rc1+git20090120-0ubuntu1) ...
 * Reloading system message bus config...
   ...done.
 * Starting Hardware abstraction layer hald
invoke-rc.d: initscript hal, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error processing hal (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 hal

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Doesn't block current arm builds any more; patch might still make sense, though.

Taking off the release radar.

[Carsten V. Munk (carsten-munk)]

Alternate fix on http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~carsten-munk/hal/led-problem/revision/2 (incorrect name in changelog) - we ran into the same issue on 2.6.21-omap1 on Nokia N8x0s. Issue happened sporadically.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

This was already done in upstream commit 336d871860710af1cb3a55234d5051f01e842e02. The fix is in Jaunty already.