He could also add to /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "ServerFlags"
      Option "AutoAddDevices" "False"
EndSection

Hasn't this been mentioned all over the place?

-Andrew

--- On Tue, 12/23/08, David Rosenstrauch <darose@darose.net> wrote:
From: David Rosenstrauch <darose@darose.net>
Subject: Re: [arch-general] Xorg locks/crashes
To: "General Discusson about Arch Linux" <arch-general@archlinux.org>
Date: Tuesday, December 23, 2008, 6:49 PM

Angel Velásquez wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 6:14 PM, Aaron Griffin
<aaronmgriffin@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 11:12 AM, Baho Utot
<baho-utot@columbus.rr.com> wrote:
>>> I purchased a new larger hard drive to install ArchLinux.
>>>
>>> Not wanting to erase the existing install from earlier this year.
>>> I booted the 2008-03-1 boot disk and installed the basic install,
rebooted.
>>>
>>> Then ran pacman -Syy pacman -Su to install updates. I then
proceeded to
>>> install alsa which when fine.
>>>
>>> Then I did a pacman -S libgl xorg mesa xf86-video-ati.
>>> then Xorg -configure followed by X -config /root/xorg.conf.new.
>>> X started and gave me the X cursor.
>>>
>>> The keyboard and mouse are not responsive and I can not kill X
with the
>>> <Backspace> trick.
>>> ALT+F1...F8 does nothing. I had to Press the "Microsoft
Windows button" to
>>> gain control of the system.
>>>
>>> I know this is not a hardware problem as the previous Arch install
runs fine
>>> with KDEMOD.
>>>
>>> Has any one experienced this?
>>>
>>> Any one with some pointers/Help?
>> http://archlinux.org/news/424/
>>
> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg_input_hotplugging

As the others indicated, X now uses hotplugging. So you're probably
failing because either you don't have the evdev driver loaded and/or you
don't have the hal service running. So add "evdev" to your
modules list
in rc.conf, and "hal" to your daemons list.

HTH,

DR