hal 0.5.9.1-1ubuntu8 deb breaks Gutsy LiveCD Persistance on update

Binary package hint: hal

I have a 16GB Corsair USB flash drive with 1 840MB fat16 partition with the Gutsy tribe5 LiveCD installed on it, the remaining in an ext3 partition labeled "casper-cw". All works fine. I am able to create a new user, install packages, Persistence mode works great.

However, upon doing a dist-upgrade from Synaptic results in a configuration error for the hal package causing the following packages to fail in their own configuration:

gnome-mount, gnome-power-manager, gnome-session, gnome-volume-manager, hal-cups-utils, hal-device-manager, hwdb-client-common, hwdb-client-gnome, network-manager, network-manager-gnome, ubuntu-desktop, update-notifier.

Once these packages fail, gnome will no longer load properly, displaying only a plain beige screen. No desktop objects.