An update of xorg has failed to build what appear to be the latest versions of xf86-input-keyboard and xf86-input-mouse. As a result the desktop appears but does not respond to either the mouse or keyboard.

There are .ebuild files for xf86-input-keyboard-1.4.0 and xf86-input-mouse-1.5.0, but both are masked for what appear to be all platforms. What's the point of including something nobody can use?

How do I
1. revert to a version of xorg that can use the drivers available, or
2. get access to the drivers for the xorg that the latest emerge world gave me?

TIA
Jim

Why not unmask them and see if that works? But you can always downgrade your xorg and mask the newer version to prevent it from emerging during an upgrade.

First thing first, what does "fails to build" mean?

What xorg-server version do you have installed right now?

Recompiling the current versions of xf86-input-keyboard, xf86-input-mouse and xf86-input-evdev (if you use evdev at all) might help, you might not need to unmask anything. If that doesn't work, please, attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file in a post here so we can review it.

I've used poor wording. I appears that when xorg-server is built, the x11-drivers need to be rebuilt to work with it. This does not happen automatically. The build does not fail. It just does not happen.

The version of xorg-server is 1.6.3.901-r2.

On Sunday I 'emerge --sync' and had problems. Perhaps I was not thorough enough, but I could not rebuild the drivers in a way that xorg-server would accept. I was also having a problem with 2 versions of eselect-opengl.

On Monday I 'emerge --sync' again and the eselect problem is no longer there. "emerge -aDu world" completes without error.

I found elsewhere that I needed to
I finally have access to the desktop as long as akonadi does not have problems.
thanks again for your help.

Yes, they need to be rebuilt each time xorg-server is updated (or almost, except if there's a trivial version bump for some reason).

It's very important to carefully read the output at the end of the merges. If my memory serves correctly, after emerging xorg-server you should always get a warning on your screen telling you to rebuild all the installed packages in the x11-drivers/ category.