Xorg: How to load 'kbd' driver using hal?

[Henning Moll]

On Freitag, 13. Februar 2009, Mario Limonciello wrote:
> I think actually for 9.04 an exclusive lock is no longer grabbed by
> the evdev driver.  Your problem may just be a moot point.  Perhaps
> you can try a recent 9.04 alpha image and see.

This would indeed solve my problem. As i now found a partial solution 
(see below) i am going just to wait for the next ubuntu release.

My solution:

kdb is not configured by hal but by xorg.conf, but Xorg is still using 
hal for other devices:
I add the kbd driver via keyboard section to /etc/X11/xorg.conf but do 
_not_ set 'Option "AutoAddDevices" "false"' in the ServerLayout 
section. In addition i create a 
file /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-x11-input.fdi with the following content 
(some lines wrapped)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.keys">
      <merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">keyboard</merge>
      <match key="/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer\
        :system.kernel.name" string="Linux">
        <merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">evdev</merge>
      </match>
      <match contains="AT Translated Set 2 keyboard"\
        key="input.product">
        <merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string"></merge>
      </match>
      <match contains="Omnibook NbSMI scancode generator"\
        key="input.product">
        <merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string"></merge>
      </match>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

This way, evdev is not used for the keyboard (and the omnibook driver), 
and it seems that Xorg falls back to xorg.conf for the keyboard. Well, 
it works! ;-)

Regards,
Henning