Major problems after updating

Question

Greetings all, have been spending a lot of time reading and trying this and that to fix this issue with out having to post a thread about it, but here we are.
I performed updates on 4/27, before doing so, I created an image of my Arch partition like I always do.  Arch was working great for me with no problems.  I performed the updates like I normally do
# pacman -Syu
There were a few updates but not as many as a couple of weeks prior and all seemed to download and install with out a hitch or any errors.  Once the updates were complete, I rebooted.  This is when everything went arwy.
Reboot hung for about 5 minutes on "Starting Hardware Abstraction Layer" Eventually it made it past this and went to my login. I logged in and executed "startx" another 5 minutes with a black screen and a solid cursor in the top left corner of the screen then eventually my X started and I was in my OpenBox WM. I figured maybe with the new kernel it had to set a few things in the background. Then I noticed I did not have much control of my mouse (synaptic touch pad on laptop) the slightest movement had the mouse arrow all over the place. Well I eventually got it to go to reboot on my OB menu. Reboot started ok then froze for about 3 minutes on "Sending SIGTERM to Processes" eventually it passed this and rebooted back to grub menu. Chose Arch and another 5 minute wait for "Starting Hardware Abstraction Layer". Once it got passed this is was about a 3 minute wait on "Checking File System" Eventually I was back in my WM and this time the mouse worked normally. I decided to see what Shutdown would do. Just like reboot, it hung on "Sending SIGTERM to Processes" then hung on "Power Off" and never powered off. Did a hard reboot same things hung but this time the solid black screen remained after attempting to start X and never went into my WM.
So here is what I did. I re-imaged the partition with my known good Arch partition from 4/27. All was well, Arch worked like a champ again but still needed to run updates. Re-booted and got to the command prompt and started updates. (prior update attempt was done while in the WM via terminal.  I read where the updates should be performed from the command line without starting X)Everything seemed to install fine, no errors. Re-booted and same thing as before. Noted a few errors and X never fully came online either.
Upon bootup at Starting D-BUS system message bus, got the error:
Failed to start message bus, the pid file /var/run/dbus.pid exist. You can remove this file and try again.
Then boot up re-started until it got to rpcbind.
ERROR RPCBIND is not running
Well after a few minutes I was finally at the command prompt. As root I removed the /var/run/dbus.pid file and rebooted again.
No change, everything that happened above happened again.
So in essence, I can't get a clean update to work in my current Arch. I could easily wipe the partition and do a fresh install of Arch, but I would not know what caused the problem, and I would not be learning anything.
A couple of key things to add.  This is a laptop.  Compaq V2000.  I also have Arch using OB on my desktop and it's pretty much set up the same and I have not had ANY issues during updates.  Arch is working GREAT on the desktop.  This has really got me stumped because it does not make any sense.  If I had the same issues on the desktop that would have made more sense.  I'm also running 2 other OS's on this same laptop and not having any issues with either of them.  Other OS's if it is important is XP Pro and Crunch Bang Statler.
I appreciate any and all responses and guidance you provide,  I apologize for this being long, but wanted to supply as much helpful information as possible.
All the best,
Ian
Last edited by ichase (2011-05-09 14:16:47)

Answer 1

you're right, this issue really doesn't make sense.  but, what also doesn't make sense is why you're still using HAL.  arch uses udev now, the successor and replacement to hal.  i'm sure if you're using both at the same time, you are really screwing things up.  i would download a brand new image of arch and reinstall it.  theres a slight possibility that udev doesn't have certain drivers for an important piece of hardware you have.  this is highly unlikely but you never know.
depending on what this is used for, you might want to use something more dated like debian.  i myself have converted from debian to arch and i like arch a lot more but debian is a bit more hardware friendly than arch, and on a fresh install it is less likely to encounter issues.