hal-set-property from a callout broken

[Phillip Susi]

I'm trying to write a callout that will perform some extra configuration 
of a device and set some properties on it in the hal database.  When I 
try to call hal-set-property from within the callout, it prints this:

error: libhal_ctx_init: (null): (null)


If I background a pipeline that sleeps for 2 seconds, then calls 
hal-set-property, the property gets set, only it seems that the hal fdi 
policies are matched against the device before the property is added, so 
matching on that property fails.  It seems that adding the property 
later does not cause hald to check for fdi matches again. 

I believe there are two bugs here.  The first is that hald is not 
listening for connections when it runs the callout, and the second is 
that bogus error message when hal-set-property fails to connect.  I am 
running hal 0.5.5.1 on ubuntu dapper. 

Anyone have any ideas on how I might work around this problem?