Comment 30 for bug 59981

Incidentally, having filed the dupe Martin mentioned above, I'm fairly certain I know what my problem was - every mirror I just checked only has the -ubuntu13 package of hal, which could have something to do with the odd fact that, even though packages.ubuntu.com, on a search for hal, claims that edgy has hal-0.5.7.1-0ubuntu15, if you actually look at the hal package link on the site, it offers you -ubuntu13, and it took me ~3m on Google to find somewhere with the appropriate upgrade.

I really wish I knew what was going on here.