for all those who hate evdev a short how to live with it and not get crazy

[Zbigniew Luszpinski]

Hello,

recently the old keyboard and mouse drivers were replaced by evdev driver. 
This created some crazy keyboard response when some keys simply stopped 
working and other gained different functions. Especially international users 
were affected by loosing national keyboard layout. Here is short man how to 
restore everything what was lost since udev in righ way:

1. lin hal (if you do not have it installed yet)
2. copy the x11 input policy file to directory of hal in /etc 
cp /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-x11-input.fdi /etc/hal/fdi/policy
3. Modify it by adding keyboard options you have in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
To make it working the syntax of added options must meet xml format.
Here are changes I made to enable Polish keyboard, define how alt key should 
behave and activate acpi keys:
--cut here--

--- 10-x11-input.fdi    2009-03-19 20:21:55.000000000 +0100
+++ 10-x11-input.fdi    2009-03-19 23:23:14.000000000 +0100
@@ -18,9 +18,6 @@
              string="Linux">
         <merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">evdev</merge>
       </match>
+<merge key="input.xkb.layout" type="string">pl</merge>
+<merge key="input.xkb.options" type="string">lv3:ralt_switch_multikey</merge>
+<merge key="input.xkb.model" type="string">acpi</merge>
     </match>
   </device>
 </deviceinfo>

--cut here--
these added options are direct replacements for the keyboard input section 
options from xorg.conf:
       Option      "XkbLayout" "pl"
       Option      "XkbOptions"  "lv3:ralt_switch_multikey"
       Option      "XkbModel" "acpi"
4. Now restart hal service to make new config active:
service hald restart
5. Comment all input sections in xorg.conf
(If you will not do this the input will be read 3 times and desktop 
applications like terminals will print every key 3 times like that:
HHHeeelllooo!!!
(comment out not only keyboard but also mouse and othe input devices which 
also may get crazy when 2 drivers will try to manage them together).
6. Configure desktop like KDE if needed. In case of kde3 the upper 
arrow/pgup/pgdn keys will not work due to different mapping of keyboard.
To restore right behaviour change in 'control center->regions and 
availability->keyboard shortcuts' the shortcut schemes from 'Current Scheme' 
to 'KDE Default'. After applying changed scheme every next open application 
like konsole will have correct keymapping.
7. If everything works as expected remove commented out input sections from 
xorg.conf. They will not be needed anymore.

have a nice day,
Zbigniew 'zbiggy' Luszpinski