Comment 9 for bug 204960

Yes, I know I am way too lazy.

So after a little research I came up with a workaround and now my remote is back alive.

Following laga's suggestion, you need to put the attached "remote.fdi" file in /usr/share/hal/fdi/preprobe/20thirdparty/

Also you need to modify the file to match your remote. In the line that reads:

<match key="info.product" string="saa7134 IR (Compro VideoMate TV">

...replace the string content with the string corresponding to your device (mine is a Compro videomate card).
You can find the proper string to put there by doing:

lshal > ~/hal-output.txt

gedit ~/hal-output.txt

...and then search for "saa7134 IR". To confirm, under the same key you should see in hal's output a line that looks like
input.device = '/dev/input/event6'
(your event number may be different). That was the problem, HAL was locking that device that LIRC needed to use.