.\" 
.\" hald manual page.
.\" Copyright (C) 2007 David Zeuthen <david@fubar.dk>
.\"
.TH HALD 8
.SH NAME
hald \- HAL daemon
.SH SYNOPSIS
.PP
.B hald
[options]

.SH DESCRIPTION

\fIhald\fP is a daemon that maintains a database of the devices
connected to the system system in real-time. The daemon connects to
the \fID-Bus\fP system message bus to provide an API that applications
can use to discover, monitor and invoke operations on devices. For
more information about both the big picture and specific API details,
refer to the \fIHAL spec\fP which can be found in
.I "/usr/share/doc/hal-doc/spec/hal-spec.html"
depending on the distribution.

.SH OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
.TP
.I "--daemon=yes|no"
Specify whether to run in the foreground or the background.
.TP
.I "--verbose=yes|no"
Enable verbose debug output.
.TP
.I "--use-syslog"
Enable logging of debug output to the syslog instead of stderr. Use 
this option only together with --verbose.
.TP
.I "--help"
Print out usage.
.TP
.I "--version"
Print the version of the daemon and exit.

.SH BUGS AND DEBUGGING
.PP
Please send bug reports to either the distribution or the HAL
mailing list, see 
.I "http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/hal"
on how to subscribe.

First, to obtain useful debug traces you will need to have
.B debuginfo
packages installed. On a Fedora system this is in the 
.B hal-debuginfo 
package and can be installed via the
.I yum
update program. 

Second, shut down the existing 
.B hald
daemon instance; on a Fedora system this is achieved by

.I "/etc/init.d/haldaemon stop"

After having shut down the daemon, you might want to run

.I "pkill hald"

to ensure that all the helper processe of
.B hald
are killed too. To start the HAL daemon, use

.I "/usr/sbin/hald --daemon=no --verbose=yes"

If the daemon crashes, you can start it under a debugger via

.I "gdb /usr/sbin/hald"

and then typing

.I "run --daemon=no --verbose=yes"

at the 
.B "(gdb)"
prompt. To capture a back trace, use the
.B "bt"
command and attach this to the bug report.

Please also attach the output of \&\fIlshal\fR\|(1) in the bug report
if possible (it's not possible if the
.B "hald"
daemon crashed). If the nature of the bug has to do with hotplugging,
attach two outputs of \&\fIlshal\fR\|(1) - one before the device
hotplug event and one after.

.SH SEE ALSO
.PP
\&\fIudev\fR\|(7), 
\&\fIdbus-daemon\fR\|(1), 
\&\fIlshal\fR\|(1), 
\&\fIhal-set-property\fR\|(1),
\&\fIhal-get-property\fR\|(1),
\&\fIhal-find-by-property\fR\|(1),
\&\fIhal-find-by-capability\fR\|(1),
\&\fIhal-is-caller-locked-out\fR\|(1)

.SH AUTHOR
Written by David Zeuthen <david@fubar.dk> with a lot of help from many
others.