Gentoo, x86_64, x.org 7.2 and evdev – input problems

After fighting a losing battle trying to get x.org 7.2 working on my machine, a nice chap over at the gentoo forums was able to help me solve the issue.

In a nutshell:

1. Make sure “hal” and “dbus” USE flags are set in make.conf.
2. Re-emerge xorg-server if they weren’t.
3. Change the “driver” names for keyboard/mouse devices to “evdev” in xorg.conf.
4. ???
5. Profit.

A snippet from my xorg.conf input sections might help:

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier     ”Mouse0″
Driver         ”evdev”
Option         ”Protocol”
Option         ”Device” “/dev/input/event5″
Option         ”Emulate3Buttons” “no”
Option         ”ZAxisMapping” “4 5″
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier     ”Keyboard0″
Driver         ”evdev”
Option      “Device”        “/dev/input/event3″
EndSection

To get the evdev event addresses (/dev/input/event3 etc) just use “cat /proc/bus/input/devices | more” and look for your keyboard vendor… my Apple keyboard showed up twice, only one of the two events worked. A little bit of trial-and-error there and you should be up and running.

The full thread is available on the Gentoo forums.

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