Fixing "failed to initialize HAL" errors under Ubuntu 8.04 on the Dell Mini 12
For a while now, when I’ve started my Mini 12 when it’s been running off the battery, HAL would crap out with for no good reason. I’m not even sure when this started happening, but it became very annoying. After a bit of research, I discovered that running this should do the trick:
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure hal
It didn’t, however. A bit more research lead me to trying this:
$ sudo rm -f /var/cache/hald/fdi-cache $ sudo dpkg-reconfigure hal
It appeared to do the trick. I think what might have happened was some upgrade of HAL in the past must have forgotten to rebuild the device information cache, so it was using stale information. If this happens again, I’ll know what to do!