Comment 18 for bug 276857

I tried this from the other end, i. e. to minimize the time between hal startup and X.

First, I switched to a VT and

  sudo killall hald gdm

Experiment 1: Just "startx"
  -> I got the "config/hal: couldn't initialize context: (null) ((null))" in Xorg.0.log, and I did not have keyboard and mouse (I do not have an xorg.conf).

So that demonstrates the "no hal" -> "no love" effect.

Experiment 2: sudo hald; startx

hald usually stays in the foreground until all the "coldplugging" is done, and then forks off into the background. This is more or less what the init script does as well. startx avoids all the gdm delays etc. This worked fine, I had keyboard and mouse, and Xorg.0.log didn't complain.

So let's see what else is different on your system:

 * Does above experiment work for you? "sudo hald; startx" -> does that give you mouse/keyboard or not?

 * If you boot with adding "text" to the kernel command line, gdm is not started. If you start (a) gdm or (b) startx manually after a text-only boot, does it work (a1/b1) the first time, (a2/b2) the second time?

 * If the previous experiment still fails for you, please boot with "text" again, go to a VT, do

     sudo killall hald
     sudo hald --verbose=yes --daemon=no 2>&1 | tee /tmp/hal.log

   then, on a second VT, do "startx" or start gdm. Once X is started up, kill it again, Control-C the foreground hald on console 1, and attach /tmp/hal.log and /var/log/Xorg.0.log.

Thanks!