The package xf86-input-vmmouse places the helper script hal-probe-vmmouse in the incorrect directory. This should be /usr/lib/hal/scripts. In reality the file gets dumped in /usr/lib/hal. Under Gentoo, when the included FDI policy for HAL adds the helper script 'hal-probe-vmmouse' to the key 'info.callouts.add' to any *possible* VMware mouse devices (the device is checked by the helper script and a small VMware binary utility), HAL doesn't appear to find the script in /usr/lib/hal and the script is never actually executed. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install xf86-input-vmmouse 2. Install hal 3. Run X.org with hal support 4. Observe as X.org and hal fail to load the proper driver for the VMware mouse. This is a two part problem- first, the script is located in /usr/lib/hal instead of /usr/lib/hal/scripts, and also re bug #271623 (hal-set-property doesn't support --direct, so hal-probe-vmmouse will fail even if it's in the right directory and gets executed) Actual Results: X.org and hal fail to load the correct driver for any VMware-enabled mouse device. X.org usually lands up having evdev handle the mouse, and the mouse gets detected as a IMPS/2 unit (which works, without the VMware functionality) instead of 'vmmouse'. Expected Results: If hal-probe-vmmouse is in the correct directory (and bug #271623 is solved), then hal-probe-vmmouse will be executed by hal via the fdi policy located in /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/20thirdparty/11-x11-vmmouse.fdi. hal-probe-vmmouse will call a small utility (/usr/bin/vmmouse_detect), which will exit with status 0 if the Gentoo system is running inside VMware. hal-probe-vmmouse will then call hal-set-property to modify the key 'input.x11_driver' for the UDI instance in hal pointing at the PS/2 port the suspected VMware mouse is attached to. The end result is that input.x11_driver should be set to "vmmouse" and NOT "evdev", ONLY IF the VMware mouse is detected by /usr/bin/vmmouse_detect (via hal-probe-vmmouse). Further down the line when X.org is launched, X will load the VMMouse driver via hal (since input.x11_driver should be correctly set to "vmmouse"), rather then IMPS/2. This seems to solve bug #239096 **PROPERLY** without having to disable AutoAddDevices in xorg.conf.
Current vmmouse ebuild has: --with-hal-bin-dir=/punt --with-hal-callouts-dir=/punt --with-hal-fdi-dir=/punt And: rm -rf "${ED}"/punt This looks correct to me, since sys-apps/hal is no longer in portage. I'm closing this as OBSOLETE
