How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
 

On Mon, 2010-02-08 at 22:20 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hi, Gentoo!

OH HAI!

[snip to the crux:]
> Can this new-style fragmented XML configuration do anything that a good
> old-fashioned, human-readable and compact xorg.conf can't? If so, what?
> What am I missing here?

presumably you're missing the previous conversation on this topic:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/225223/focus=225223

> Please, somebody, tell me all this HAL stuff is straightforwardly
> explained in an easily accessible Gentoo document, so that I can hang my
> head in shame and apologise for the noise! ;-)

isn't it just done for you?

$ slocate 10-input-policy.fdi
/usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-input-policy.fdi

iain@orpheus ~ $ equery belongs /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-input-policy.fdi
* Searching for /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-input-policy.fdi ...
sys-apps/hal-0.5.14-r2 (/usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-input-policy.fdi)

so why are you copying these files by hand?
--
Iain Buchanan <iaindb at netspace dot net dot au>

A university faculty is 500 egotists with a common parking problem.

How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
 

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 4:20 PM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
> Please, somebody, tell me all this HAL stuff is straightforwardly
> explained in an easily accessible Gentoo document, so that I can hang my
> head in shame and apologise for the noise! ;-)

I believe you'll be hearing from Dale in the near future. :)

HAL-in-xorg-in-a-nutshell: If you're using an ordinary desktop system,
you shouldn't need to manually do anything. Just run X as usual and it
should work. You can further customize behavior from inside
Gnome/KDE/whatever using their configuration tools.

Obviously that doesn't always work, at which point you'll then need to
start editing stuff. But I wouldn't bother with it unless you're
unable to get into X for some reason. The first place to look is the X
log file, which contains info about the hardware it auto-detected.
There's also quite a bit of outdated info from when the transition was
taking place, much of it making things sound more complicated than
they really are. (I have not RTFM)

Are you able to get into X or is it failing?

How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
 

Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hi, Gentoo!
>
> I've just got a sparkling new installation of Gentoo on my new PC. It
> only took me ~5 hours, mainly because I'd already configured the kernel
> in a trial run. :-)
>
> However, I'm now trying to get X up and running. "The X Server
> Configuration HOWTO", section 3. "Configuring Xorg" says:
>
> "Hal comes with many premade device rules, also called policies.
> These policy files are available in /usr/....../policy. Just find a
> few that suit your needs most closely and copy them to /etc/...."
>
> "For example, to get a basic working keyboard/mouse combination, you
> could copy the following files...
> /usr/.........../10-input-policy.fdi
> /usr/.........../10-x11-input.fdi"
>
> Am I the only person that finds this semantic gibberish? Is there
> any explanation somewhere of what a "policy" aka "device rule" is? What
> is the semantic significance of a "device rule"? What does it mean, to
> "rule a device", or what sort of restrictions are being placed on this
> device?
>
> Given that one might desire a "basic working keyboard/mouse
> combination", what is the chain of reasoning that ends up selecting the
> file called "10-input-policy.fdi" from all the other ones?
>
> This file is an inpenetrable stanza of uncommented XML. Are its verbs
> documented somewhere? What do "<match ...>" and "<append ....>" mean,
> for example?
>
> Can this new-style fragmented XML configuration do anything that a good
> old-fashioned, human-readable and compact xorg.conf can't? If so, what?
> What am I missing here?
>
> Please, somebody, tell me all this HAL stuff is straightforwardly
> explained in an easily accessible Gentoo document, so that I can hang my
> head in shame and apologise for the noise! ;-)
>

First, give xorg a chance to figure it out by itself. Most stuff works
here without any HAL tinkering:

$ ls -l /etc/hal/fdi/policy/
total 0
$

Maybe the documentation is a bit too much here, it should probably say
that you should start working with the HAL policies when you notice that
some things are not working right (and when that happens do something
like echo 'keyboard-type missing-feature HAL example' > google)

--
Regards,
Tom

How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
 

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 2:20 PM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
> Hi, Gentoo!
>
> I've just got a sparkling new installation of Gentoo on my new PC. *It
> only took me ~5 hours, mainly because I'd already configured the kernel
> in a trial run. *:-)
>
> However, I'm now trying to get X up and running. *"The X Server
> Configuration HOWTO", section 3. "Configuring Xorg" says:
>
> * *"Hal comes with many premade device rules, also called policies.
> * *These policy files are available in /usr/....../policy. *Just find a
> * *few that suit your needs most closely and copy them to /etc/...."
>
> * *"For example, to get a basic working keyboard/mouse combination, you
> * *could copy the following files...
> * */usr/.........../10-input-policy.fdi
> * */usr/.........../10-x11-input.fdi"
>
> . *Am I the only person that finds this semantic gibberish? *Is there
> any explanation somewhere of what a "policy" aka "device rule" is? *What
> is the semantic significance of a "device rule"? *What does it mean, to
> "rule a device", or what sort of restrictions are being placed on this
> device?
>
> Given that one might desire a "basic working keyboard/mouse
> combination", what is the chain of reasoning that ends up selecting the
> file called "10-input-policy.fdi" from all the other ones?
>
> This file is an inpenetrable stanza of uncommented XML. *Are its verbs
> documented somewhere? *What do "<match ...>" and "<append ....>" mean,
> for example?
>
> Can this new-style fragmented XML configuration do anything that a good
> old-fashioned, human-readable and compact xorg.conf can't? *If so, what?
> What am I missing here?
>
> Please, somebody, tell me all this HAL stuff is straightforwardly
> explained in an easily accessible Gentoo document, so that I can hang my
> head in shame and apologise for the noise! *;-)
>
> --
> Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
>
>

You are not the only person who finds that decipherable. I don't
understand it and actually I don't even use them unless they are
already where they need to be. hald runs default in rc-update and
things just work. I've done two new AMD64 installations this week and
things seem to be working fine so far.

I'm using evdev in make.config for X mouse and keyboard.

HTH,
Mark

How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
 

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 4:20 PM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
>> Please, somebody, tell me all this HAL stuff is straightforwardly
>> explained in an easily accessible Gentoo document, so that I can hang my
>> head in shame and apologise for the noise! *;-)
>
> I believe you'll be hearing from Dale in the near future. :)
>
> HAL-in-xorg-in-a-nutshell: If you're using an ordinary desktop system,
> you shouldn't need to manually do anything. Just run X as usual and it
> should work.

While I think this is what people believe, I must point out that for
it work automatically the system needs to be supported by whatever
version of drivers support the graphics device in the system.

I just got a DH55HC motherboard with the i5-661 processor which does
some or most of the VGA function. For that device to be discovered and
run automatically I would have had to use stuff that's marked ~amd64
which I generally don't do and in this case didn't because it became a
waterfall of things getting unmasked.

So, if you're supported it will work. If you're not because this is
new hardware then you still need xorg.conf.

Cheers,
Mark

How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
 

chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties:

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 4:20 PM, Alan Mackenzie<acm@muc.de> wrote:


Please, somebody, tell me all this HAL stuff is straightforwardly
explained in an easily accessible Gentoo document, so that I can hang my
head in shame and apologise for the noise! ;-)


I believe you'll be hearing from Dale in the near future. :)



ROFLMAO !!!!

Nothing else needs to be said. I think Alan knows how I feel about hal
and all the "issues" I have with it. He also knows how to disable the
stupid thing too. ;-) If he doesn't, he certainly knows who to ask. LOL


Dale

:-) :-)

How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
 

On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 10:20:47PM +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote

> However, I'm now trying to get X up and running. "The X Server
> Configuration HOWTO", section 3. "Configuring Xorg" says:
>
> "Hal comes with many premade device rules, also called policies.
> These policy files are available in /usr/....../policy. Just find a
> few that suit your needs most closely and copy them to /etc/...."
>
> "For example, to get a basic working keyboard/mouse combination, you
> could copy the following files...
> /usr/.........../10-input-policy.fdi
> /usr/.........../10-x11-input.fdi"
>
> . Am I the only person that finds this semantic gibberish? Is there
> any explanation somewhere of what a "policy" aka "device rule" is? What
> is the semantic significance of a "device rule"? What does it mean, to
> "rule a device", or what sort of restrictions are being placed on this
> device?

My solution to simplify Gentoo...

waltdnes@d531 ~ $ cat /etc/portage/package.mask
sys-libs/pam
sys-apps/dbus
sys-apps/hal

You'll have to do a manual depclean (very carefully) and
revdep-rebuild, but it's worth the effort to purify your Gentoo system.

--
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>

How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
 

chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties:

On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 10:20:47PM +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote



However, I'm now trying to get X up and running. "The X Server
Configuration HOWTO", section 3. "Configuring Xorg" says:

"Hal comes with many premade device rules, also called policies.
These policy files are available in /usr/....../policy. Just find a
few that suit your needs most closely and copy them to /etc/...."

"For example, to get a basic working keyboard/mouse combination, you
could copy the following files...
/usr/.........../10-input-policy.fdi
/usr/.........../10-x11-input.fdi"

. Am I the only person that finds this semantic gibberish? Is there
any explanation somewhere of what a "policy" aka "device rule" is? What
is the semantic significance of a "device rule"? What does it mean, to
"rule a device", or what sort of restrictions are being placed on this
device?


My solution to simplify Gentoo...

waltdnes@d531 ~ $ cat /etc/portage/package.mask
sys-libs/pam
sys-apps/dbus
sys-apps/hal

You'll have to do a manual depclean (very carefully) and
revdep-rebuild, but it's worth the effort to purify your Gentoo system.




Simpler than that, just add -hal to xorg stuff in package.use and then
run emerge -uvDNa world. It will rebuild a couple things, maybe even
just xorg, then everything is back to the old way. This allows hal to
be their for other things where it does work but it disables it where it
doesn't work.


I'm not saying your way won't work but I think mine is easier.

Dale

:-) :-)

How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
 

On Tuesday 09 February 2010 00:20:47 Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hi, Gentoo!
>
> I've just got a sparkling new installation of Gentoo on my new PC. It
> only took me ~5 hours, mainly because I'd already configured the kernel
> in a trial run. :-)
>
> However, I'm now trying to get X up and running. "The X Server
> Configuration HOWTO", section 3. "Configuring Xorg" says:
>
> "Hal comes with many premade device rules, also called policies.
> These policy files are available in /usr/....../policy. Just find a
> few that suit your needs most closely and copy them to /etc/...."
>
> "For example, to get a basic working keyboard/mouse combination, you
> could copy the following files...
> /usr/.........../10-input-policy.fdi
> /usr/.........../10-x11-input.fdi"
>
> . Am I the only person that finds this semantic gibberish?

No, you are not the only one. There's a whole crowd of us here already, you
can join our club.

We even have a fearless leader and his name is Dale.

--
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
 

On Mon, 8 Feb 2010 21:17:08 -0500, Walter Dnes wrote:

> My solution to simplify Gentoo...
>
> waltdnes@d531 ~ $ cat /etc/portage/package.mask
> sys-libs/pam
> sys-apps/dbus
> sys-apps/hal

That's as much crippling as simplifying. You can do without pam and hal
by setting appropriate USE flags (I run pam-free here by
doing just that) but D-Bus provides a standard way for applications to
communicate with one another and removing it can stop your desktop
working as it should.


--
Neil Bothwick

WINDOWS: Will Install Needless Data On Whole System