Following the thread from bug #567756, Ariel Garcia opened a new bug report claiming that this problem only was applicable with an empty xorg.conf
Please see bug #571636. Quote: The problem dissapears if instead of having an empty xorg.conf file, I add the following "manual" configuration: ---------------------- Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "L0" InputDevice "k0" EndSection Section "InputDevice" Identifier "k0" Driver "evdev" Option "Device" "/dev/input/event4" EndSection ---------------------- Endquote. I tried this, and also the suggested change to the Device option to reflect a file listed in /dev/input/by-path/ or /dev/input/by-id/ Strangely though I had no file within either of these directories corresponding to a keyboard of any kind, just two entries: /dev/input/by-id/usb-Apple_Computer_Apple_Internal_Trackpad-event-mouse and /dev/input/by-id/usb-Apple_Computer_Apple_Internal_Trackpad-event-mouse And clearly this fix didn't work for me. So does this mean my keyboard is not being detected at all by Hal or udev (or whatever it is now)?