I stared at that patch again, and it indeed looks fishy now (incompatibility to the ioctl). I backed out the patch and will discuss this with the author and upstream.
hal (0.5.7-1ubuntu15) dapper; urgency=low . * Fix name of 14_prove_volume_invalidlabel.patch -> s/prove/probe/. * Disable debian/patches/13_probe_input_endianess.patch for now; it is incorrect (the ioctl expects chars, not long) and causes crashes. Closes: LP#43962 (and half a dozen dups) ** Changed in: hal (Ubuntu) Status: Confirmed => Fix Released -- Hald won't start after latest updates https://launchpad.net/bugs/43962 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs