[SM-Discuss] Reclaim your sanity from Xorg and HAL

Juuso Alasuutari iuso at sourcemage.org
Fri Nov 21 10:18:05 EST 2008


I did it! After the whole Xorg/HAL/evdev mess getting on my nerves for 
quite a while I figured out the Perfect(TM) solution. In other words, 
here's how to make your keyboard and mouse work properly with 
xorg-server 1.5.3.

1) Remove all mouse and keyboard configs from /etc/X11/xorg.conf. This 
consists of:

- Removing the "InputDevice" entries from the "ServerLayout" section,
   and
- removing the "InputDevice" sections themselves (their identifiers are
   "Keyboard" and "Mouse").

2) Remove this line from /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
     Option "AutoAddDevices" "false"

3) In /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-keymap.fdi, replace this line:
       <merge key="input.xkb.rules" type="string">base</merge>
With this:
       <merge key="input.xkb.rules" type="string">evdev</merge>

This tells Xorg to map the keycodes sent by evdev according to 
/usr/share/X11/xkb/keycodes/evdev instead of the older 
/usr/share/X11/xkb/keycodes/xfree86.

If you also want to use a non-us keymap, also replace this line:
       <merge key="input.xkb.layout" type="string">us</merge>
With something like this:
       <merge key="input.xkb.layout" type="string">fi</merge>

4) Restart X and hald.

Tell me if anything fails after following this advice.

Juuso


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