hal, ntfs, and 10.0-RC3

[Kevin Oberman]

On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 11:09 AM, Joe Marcus Clarke <marcus at marcuscom.com>wrote:

> On 1/6/14, 1:55 PM, Kevin Oberman wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 9:47 AM, Joe Marcus Clarke <marcus at marcuscom.com
> > <mailto:marcus at marcuscom.com>> wrote:
> >
> >     On 1/6/14, 2:01 AM, Alberto Villa wrote:
> >     > 2014/1/6 Kevin Oberman <rkoberman at gmail.com
> >     <mailto:rkoberman at gmail.com>>:
> >     >> Since I updated to 10.0-RC3 (from 9), hald no longer works with
> >     my ntfs
> >     >> partitions. I can mount them manually with ntfs-3g, but when not
> >     mounted,
> >     >> hal does not see them at all.
> >     >>
> >     >> Might this be fall-out of the removal of ntfs (read-only)
> >     support? I have
> >     >> not looked through the hald sources to see how it detects these
> >     slices. I
> >     >> do find it interesting that mounting one NTFS file system causes
> >     all of the
> >     >> other ones appear to hald.
> >     >
> >     > I've done some work on HAL in past months, so I have a view on the
> >     matter.
> >     >
> >     > HAL uses sysctl for disks detection, so it's up to the system to
> list
> >     > all the available drives. I'll try to have a look in next days,
> but my
> >     > wild guess (since I've not been using ntfs-3g for years) is that
> >     > ntfs-3g unloads its module when all mounts are removed, thus making
> >     > the drives undetectable again. Is that correct?
> >
> >     HAL uses libvolume_id to taste the volumes to determine the file
> system
> >     type.  It relies on sysctl to enumerate the disks and volumes as
> you've
> >     pointed out.  What does sysctl -b kern.geom.conftxt say?  Each
> partition
> >     listed there should go through libvolume_id detection.
> >
> >     Joe
> >
> >
> > Joe,
> >
> > Looks good to me, but hald does not seem to see it:
> >
> > 0 DISK ada0 750156374016 512 hd 1 sc 63
> > 1 LABEL diskid/DISK-WD-WX21A61N8718 750156374016 512 i 0 o 0
> > 2 PART diskid/DISK-WD-WX21A61N8718s4 16833839104 512 i 4 o 733319528448
> > ty ntfs xs MBR xt 7
> > 2 PART diskid/DISK-WD-WX21A61N8718s3 241172480000 512 i 3 o 492147048448
> > ty ebr xs MBR xt 15
> > 3 PART diskid/DISK-WD-WX21A61N8718s5 241171431424 512 i 1 o 1048576 ty
> > ntfs xs MBREXT xt 7
> > 2 PART diskid/DISK-WD-WX21A61N8718s2 490887708672 512 i 2 o 1259339776
> > ty ntfs xs MBR xt 7
> > 2 PART diskid/DISK-WD-WX21A61N8718s1 1258291200 512 i 1 o 1048576 ty
> > ntfs xs MBR xt 7
> > 1 PART ada0s4 16833839104 512 i 4 o 733319528448 ty ntfs xs MBR xt 7
> > 2 LABEL ntfs/Lenovo_Recovery 16833839104 512 i 0 o 0
> > 1 PART ada0s3 241172480000 512 i 3 o 492147048448 ty ebr xs MBR xt 15
> > 2 PART ada0s5 241171431424 512 i 1 o 1048576 ty ntfs xs MBREXT xt 7
> > 1 PART ada0s2 490887708672 512 i 2 o 1259339776 ty ntfs xs MBR xt 7
> > 2 LABEL ntfs/Windows7_OS 490887708672 512 i 0 o 0
> > 1 PART ada0s1 1258291200 512 i 1 o 1048576 ty ntfs xs MBR xt 7
> > 2 LABEL ntfs/SYSTEM_DRV 1258291200 512 i 0 o 0
> > # lshal | grep ada0
> >   block.device = '/dev/ada0'  (string)
> >   freebsd.device_file = '/dev/ada0'  (string)
> >
> > So hald sees the disk, but none of the partitions (slices). Could the "2
> > PART ada0s5" be messing things up? The disk has only four slices (it's
> > MBR formatted). I think I will boot Windows and see wat it says about
> > the partitioning.
> > # gpart show ada0
> > =>        63  1465149105  ada0  MBR  (699G)
> >           63        1985        - free -  (993K)
> >         2048     2457600     1  ntfs  (1.2G)
> >      2459648   958765056     2  ntfs  (457G)
> >    961224704   471040000     3  ebr  (225G)
> >   1432264704    32878592     4  ntfs  (16G)
> >   1465143296        5872        - free -  (2.9M)
> > Slice 1 is the weird SYSTEM_DRV, 2 is Windows7_OS, 3 is an exfat file
> > system named "Media", and 4 is the "Lenovo_Recovery" file system. But
> > geom sees a mysterious fifth one that it says is NTFS??? Still, a soon
> > as I mount the seconds slice, hald "sees" all of them.
> > --
> > R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
> > E-mail: rkoberman at gmail.com <mailto:rkoberman at gmail.com>
>
> I don't suppose you have a 9.X output of the conftxt?  This is one area
> where HAL could use an update to use confxml or the like.  It's tied to
> the output of conftxt and thus the format of it.  I have a feeling this
> format is different.  I'll have to look over the code...
>
> Nope. I'm afraid I blew away my 9 backup yesterday to prep to update to
RC4. And, to make matters worse,  after re-booting, I can no longer get my
network to run so my system is pretty useless until I can figure out what I
messed up. (Also had to fix a flat on my bike. Guess it's just not my day.)

Using confxml would make a lot of sense, but it does not look like HAL has
much of a future. Is it used on MATE? Pretty sure that it is not on Gnome3.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
E-mail: rkoberman at gmail.com