How to make hal pick reliably up a new configuration file

[Patryk Zawadzki]

On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 3:46 PM, Michael T <raselmsh at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Dear List,
>
> I assume that I am overlooking something obvious to you here, but I really have
> no idea what it is, so I would be very grateful for any hints.  I have the
> following problem with hal on at least vanilla-from-installer-CD Ubuntu 8.10
> systems and the Ubuntu 8.10 live CD.  I would like to have an X.Org mouse driver
> (specifically the VirtualBox guest mouse driver) advertised by hal.  To achieve
> this, I copy the following file:

[...]

> into /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/20thirdparty and restart hal (/etc/init.d/hal
> restart).  Sometimes this succeeds and lshal | grep x11 shows the right entry.
> Sometimes, in apparently identical setups, this fails.  Usually after rebooting
> and/or updating the system a few times it starts to work (obviously this does
> not apply when using the live CD).

First, you might want to use /etc/hal/fdi/policy/ instead, that's
where local customizations are supposed to live.

Second, if stopping and starting hald does not fix your problem then
it has nothing to do with HAL not picking up new config files. Make
sure your rules are correct (observe lshal when it does not work,
check udev device list).

-- 
Patryk Zawadzki