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#1 2005-04-10 21:58:06

andrej.podzimek
Member
From: Zürich, Switzerland
Registered: 2005-04-10
Posts: 115

"DEVPATH is not set" in my error log

Hello everyone,

I am experiencing the following problem with my laptop (Asus M2400N). Whenever I start Arch Linux (0.7 with all the updates), the machine freezes for about 20 seconds when starting the Hotplug daemon.

This is what I found in the error log:
<pre><b>Apr  7 16:13:24 xandrej hal.hotplug[2762]: DEVPATH is not set</b></pre>
About 20 error messages of the same kind are generated each time the daemon starts, each one with a different PID (or whatever the number after hal.hotplug could be). It looks like a process trying repeatedly to perform an action and failing all the time.

Could you please give me a piece of advice on what this could be? I have already been trying to tackle the problem for about a week, so I'm getting desperate.

Thx in advance!

Andrej

P. S. I'm using Udev. I load neither dbus, nor hal. (Should I do so?)

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#2 2005-04-10 22:09:35

i3839
Member
Registered: 2004-02-04
Posts: 1,185

Re: "DEVPATH is not set" in my error log

Hotplug's rc.d script calls some hal script (hal.hotplug, look in /etc/hotplug.d/) which expects DEVPATH to be set.

If you don't use hal then removing it should fix all problems, but starting hal before hotplug may help too.

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#3 2005-04-11 00:55:50

andrej.podzimek
Member
From: Zürich, Switzerland
Registered: 2005-04-10
Posts: 115

Re: "DEVPATH is not set" in my error log

Yes, I do... (I often read USB disks, CF cards and other media.) The only matter is how to make it work flawlessly. Those hotplug scripsts are pretty confusing as they call one another. I am still unsure about several things:

What is the difference between hotplug and d-bus with hal? Do they serve the same purpose or are they something different? How are they related to Udev? (Is there any good article about these issues?)

Hotplug daemon was included in the rc.conf file even in the base installation, so it seems that it shouldn't require d-bus and hal to be loaded first. What should be in the DEVPATH variable? I tried to set it manually to "/dev", but this didn't help, as other missing variables appeared in the error log.

Anyway. I still don't know whether hotplug has something in common with hal and d-bus and how these things cooperate, which files to edit and which daemons to start. Could you shed more light on this, please?

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#4 2005-04-12 01:13:21

andrej.podzimek
Member
From: Zürich, Switzerland
Registered: 2005-04-10
Posts: 115

Re: "DEVPATH is not set" in my error log

OK, I inserted hal and hotplug, they both start flawlessly, but I still get this:

<pre>
Apr 12 03:01:37 xandrej hal.hotplug[2795]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:38 xandrej hal.hotplug[2832]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:38 xandrej hal.hotplug[2858]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:38 xandrej hal.hotplug[2889]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:39 xandrej hal.hotplug[2913]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:39 xandrej hal.hotplug[2940]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:40 xandrej hal.hotplug[3110]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:42 xandrej hal.hotplug[3263]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:42 xandrej hal.hotplug[3318]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:42 xandrej hal.hotplug[3377]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:42 xandrej hal.hotplug[3445]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:43 xandrej hal.hotplug[3520]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:43 xandrej hal.hotplug[3610]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:44 xandrej hal.hotplug[3740]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:44 xandrej hal.hotplug[3764]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:45 xandrej hal.hotplug[3788]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:45 xandrej hal.hotplug[3822]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:47 xandrej hal.hotplug[4031]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:47 xandrej hal.hotplug[4084]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:47 xandrej hal.hotplug[4179]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:47 xandrej hal.hotplug[4210]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:48 xandrej hal.hotplug[4340]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:48 xandrej hal.hotplug[4374]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:01:49 xandrej eth1394: eth2: IEEE-1394 IPv4 over 1394 Ethernet (fw-host0)
Apr 12 03:01:49 xandrej hal.hotplug[4859]: DEVPATH is not set
Apr 12 03:02:00 ...
</pre>

That is 23 seconds of delay! :cry: Something's wrong here.

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#5 2005-04-12 15:19:52

i3839
Member
Registered: 2004-02-04
Posts: 1,185

Re: "DEVPATH is not set" in my error log

Did you try uninstalling hal yet? (or disable its scripts)

For some info about hotplug and udev see http://wiki2.archlinux.org/index.php/Li … 20Hardware

I don't really know hal and dbus, but hal stands for hardware abstraction layer and dbus is a message bus system (pacman -Si). At least hal is just called by hotplug or udev, its scripts should be somewhere like /etc/hotplug.d/default and/or /etc/dev.d/. They're e.g. used in things like gnome to automatically add icons of external devices like usb sticks and mount them.

More on topic though, I think DEVPATH should always be set by hotplug, so not sure what's going on.

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#6 2005-04-12 15:27:38

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: "DEVPATH is not set" in my error log

Hmmm, what does your /etc/hotplug.d directory look like? Maybe the udev script needs to run before hal? *shrug*.  I am, of course, assuming udev has something to do with DEVPATH

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#7 2005-04-12 15:37:55

i3839
Member
Registered: 2004-02-04
Posts: 1,185

Re: "DEVPATH is not set" in my error log

No, hotplug sets DEVPATH, udev has nothing to do with this (except if someone let the hal hotplug script be run by udev, which would explain all this madness. Unlikely though.).

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#8 2005-04-12 15:45:40

andrej.podzimek
Member
From: Zürich, Switzerland
Registered: 2005-04-10
Posts: 115

Re: "DEVPATH is not set" in my error log

You're right, the udev script deals with a variable called DEVPATH. Unfortunately, the etc/udev_start script is run by rc.sysinit even before modules are loaded, so the the contents of DEVPATH doesn't seem to be handed over to hotplug scripts. There are two nested loops in udev_start, both of them changing the DEVPATH vigorously.

But that doesn't seem to cause the problem. My udev script is run well ahead before all the dbus/hal/hotplug stuff. The rc scripts and rc agents don't seem to have any DEVPATH variable. If I understand the error log and the udev_start script well, DEVPATH should have a different value each time either /sbin/udevsend or hal.hotplug are called. This is obviously not the case and that's where the problems begin.

There are many more "device-specific" temporary variables missing. As you can find in <b>man udevsend</b>, when udevsend doesn't get a SEQNUM, it waits for a long time for something (or nothing...) to happen. That's the main reason of all the troubles.

What shell I do to sort this out?

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#9 2005-04-12 17:25:49

i3839
Member
Registered: 2004-02-04
Posts: 1,185

Re: "DEVPATH is not set" in my error log

Remove hotplug from the daemons array and load all your modules explicitly with rc.conf. SEQNUM is only not set at coldplug: the hotplug daemon script which is run at startup.

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