I finally got my mouse and keyboard back. After changing profiles on Gentoo and doing a complete rebuild my mouse was totally unresponsive. Since I was running enlightenment I couldn’t really do much with the keyboard either. I checked my /var/log/Xorg.0.log and one very weird log message jumped out and caught my eye

AllowEmptyInput is on, devices using drivers 'kbd', 'mouse' or 'vmmouse' will be disabled

My old installation had no such problem but I guess that’s what happens as you track the latest versions of things.

The solution is simple. You just need to add this line

    Option              "AllowEmptyInput" "false"

To your “ServerLayout” section. My Nvidia TwinView configuration is below, feel free to copy it as a known working configuration to base your own system on.

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 1.0  (buildmeister@builder58)  Tue Nov  4 17:18:57 PST 2008
Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier          "Layout0"
    Screen              0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice         "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice         "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    Option              "AllowEmptyInput" "false"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection




Section "Module"
    Load           "dbe"
    Load           "extmod"
    Load           "type1"
    Load           "freetype"
    Load           "glx"
    Load           "dri"
EndSection

Section "dri"
        Mode 0666
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from data in "/etc/conf.d/gpm"
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 110.0
    VertRefresh     50.0 - 150.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor1"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 110.0
    VertRefresh     50.0 - 150.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen      0




    # other options I recommend:
    Option     "RenderAccel"
    Option     "HWcursor"
    Option     "CursorShadow"
    Option     "CursorShadowAlpha" "32"
    Option     "CursorShadowXOffset" "3"
    Option     "CursorShadowYOffset" "3"

    # if you want Composite and GLX (they don't cooperate):
    Option     "AllowGLXWithComposite"

    # the TwinView stuff
    Option     "TwinView"
    Option     "MetaModes"  "1280x1024,1680x1050; 1280x1024,1280x1024; 1280x1024; 1024x768,1024x768; 1024x768; 800x600,800x600; 800x600"
    Option     "TwinViewOrientation"      "RightOf"
    Option     "SecondMonitorHorizSync"   "UseEdidFreqs"
    Option     "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "UseEdidFreqs"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection