[Bug 173031] New: kio_media's HAL backend dying

[Antonio Batovanja]

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=173031

           Summary: kio_media's HAL backend dying
           Product: kde
           Version: 3.5
          Platform: Ubuntu Packages
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: crash
          Priority: NOR
         Component: general
        AssignedTo: unassigned-bugs at kde.org
        ReportedBy: toni at toni.to


Version:            (using KDE 3.5.10)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Ubuntu Packages

On KDE 3.5.10 (Kubuntu 8.04) and 3.5.8 (Kubuntu 7.10):
kio_media loads on demand, HAL backend is active.

Navigating to system:/media with Konqueror or Dolphin initially works (all
entries are there), but after a while nothing is shown and notifications of USB
sticks or CSs/DVDs are not shown. When I navigate to system:/media, I can click
on the CD icon, but get an error message (translated) "this function is only
available with HAL".

Further investigation (reading source code) shows that it is a problem with
kio_media's HAL backend.

While everything is working fine, executing
$ dcop kded mediamanager fullList
returns (as expected by Dolphin):
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_2e648e91_f15c_4b78_8680_37dea36b783e
 sda2
 498G-Medium

 true
 /dev/sda2
 /
 ext3
 true

 media/hdd_mounted

 ---

and after a while, the same command returns:
/org/kde/mediamanager/fstab/devsda2
 sda2
 Festplatte (sda2)

 true
 /dev/sda2
 /
 ext3
 true

 media/hdd_mounted

 ---

(note that the first line is different)

Looking at mediamanager's source code, I'd say that HAL backend has a problem,
since the second answer comes from the fstab backend.

Calling
$ dcop kded mediamanager reloadBackends

fixes the problem temporarily.

I have this problem on 100+ installations, but I cannot reproduce it on my
laptop. I don't know what exactly is causing the problem. Maybe dbus is
disconnecting kio_media, and kio_media is not reconnecting afterwards?
The only thing I see is cups sending very frequent add/remove printer
notifications on system dbus, I don't get these notifications on my location.

For reference, dbus versions are 1.1.1 (Kubuntu 7.10) and 1.1.20 (Kubuntu
8.04).

Our temporary solution is a cron job executing dcop query,  and issuing
reloadBackends when needed (mailing us active processes and last log entries).
Since activating that job on a couple of workstations this morning, everything
works fine... If I do get error reports, I'll post them here.

Anything else I could check?
Compiling KDE from scratch is not a possibility here, sorry.
Toni


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