[SOLVED] HAL and DBUS fail to start

[ScottWilson1990]

Hi,

I don't know if this is the right place to post this but here goes anyway.

System:
ASUS Pro50n Laptop
Distro: Arch Linux
WM/DE: Gnome

I've recently installed Arch linux with the gnome desktop environment, and everything is working fine apart from HAL and DBUS. I'm not sure why this problem is happening and I have no idea about any settings for HAL and DBUS all I know is what it says in the wiki.

The problem I have is that HAL and DBUS fail to start. I have tried /etc/rc.d/hal start and get the message BUSY.. then FAIL. I have tried /etc/rc.d/dbus start and get exactly the same. I have tried restart and that also fails.

*EDIT* I have just tried /etc/rc.d/dbus start again without changing a thing and dbus has started successfully but HAL still fails.

The further problem, which I think is related to HAL not starting... possibly... Is that I can't watch DVD's / anything in the DVD drive. I can see it in Places >Computer as "CD/DVD Drive: 3_MEN_IN_ANOTHER_BOAT" but when I click to load it or if I open Totem and try and load it all I get is the error: Unable to mount location: Not Authorized. Is this related to HAL or is this a completely different issue?



*EDIT* fixed the HAL problem, reinstalled xf86-input-evdev package and it seemed to fix the problem. However I am still having a problem with watching DVD's can anyone help with this?


Thanks,
Scott.

[reed9]

Is your user a member of the optical group?

As root

gpasswd -a <user> optical

[reed9]

Also, how are you starting GNOME? Are you using GDM?

[ScottWilson1990]

Hi Reed,

My user is part of the optical group, I just added it again just to make sure, but I did it when following the beginners wiki.

I'm still logging in using the console with startx, havn't got round to setting GDM up yet.


Problem still persists, anything else anyone can think of?

Thanks,
Scott.

[reed9]

I do have an idea. When you use GDM as a login manager, it handles connection the consolekit session. From startx, you probably need to include a line to connect to the consolekit session.

In your ~/.xinitrc file, you should launch gnome as so

exec ck-launch-session gnome-session

[ScottWilson1990]

Yes! that works!. Thanks so much Reed.

What is that line in the ~/.xinitrc doing, is ck-launch-session just telling consolekit-to launch- with gnome-session? or...?


Thanks again Reed, massive help .
Scott.

[reed9]

What is that line in the ~/.xinitrc doing, is ck-launch-session just telling consolekit-to launch- with gnome-session? or...?

I can't say I understand consolekit too well. The command attaches a consolekit session to your X session, be it GNOME, XFCE, openbox, or whatever.

Consolekit is a framework to track users and handle session management.

The way it works, currently, is that after the login manager (KDM,
GDM, etc) authenticates a new user it tells ConsoleKit to open a new
session. CK then generates a globally unique secret cookie and
returns that to the login manager. The login manager stores that
cookie in the environment of the new login process as
XDG_SESSION_COOKIE (GDM 2.17.2 or greater already does this). So,
membership in this session is defined as knowledge of this cookie.
This aspect can be considered a replacement for utmp and things like
pam_console.

But, not using a login manager, we have to do it ourselves.

[ScottWilson1990]

I see, I don't understand why consolekit doesn't automatically do it for startx like it does with GDM, but oh well, at least it works now .

Changed Title to SOLVED.

Thanks for all your speedy help Reed,
Scott.