While I performed apt-get dist-upgrade on my debian machine, to update from Etch to Lenny I had the issue, that the HAL-package was not able to be upgraded (which caused some other parts of debian not to be able to be upgraded).
I found out how to fix that problem, since I noticed that hal wasn't started properly.
If HAL hangs on upgrade, press CTRL+C to stop apt-get. Then type:
/etc/ini.d/dbus restart
And after that do the following again:
apt-get dist-upgrade
Now everything should work fine.
