Here's a dump of everything I did. I followed what one of those people said in bug 43962.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~/hal$ sudo dpkg -i ./hal_*.deb (Reading database ... 118997 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace hal 0.5.7-1ubuntu15 (using ./hal_0.5.7-1ubuntu15_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement hal ... Setting up hal (0.5.7-1ubuntu15) ... * Reloading system message bus config [ ok ] * Starting Hardware abstraction layer hald /usr/sbin/hald: unrecognized option `--retain-privileges' usage : hald [--daemon=yes|no] [--verbose=yes|no] [--help] --daemon=yes|no Become a daemon --verbose=yes|no Print out debug (overrides HALD_VERBOSE) --use-syslog Print out debug messages to syslog instead of stderr. Use this option to get debug messages if HAL runs as daemon. --help Show this information and exit --version Output version information and exit The HAL daemon detects devices present in the system and provides the org.freedesktop.Hal service through the system-wide message bus provided by D-BUS. For more information visit http://freedesktop.org/Software/hal -- HAL bootup command is wrong (falls back to -h) https://launchpad.net/bugs/44770 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs