I just installed the stable "dockyard" version of Arklinux. I had been running 1.0 alpha 9. Everything went fine until it rebooted and KDE came up. I have no keyboard and no mouse! Can anyone help

Try rebooting. If you are using LILO, you can press ALT along the way and get a boot: prompt.
linux 1 Should boot you into runlevel 1 where you can poke around in text mode.
Login as root.
less /var/log/XFree86.log
will give you a replay of all the messages starting the Xserver. Look for relevant messages.

I'm using grub!

You will need a rescue floppy or CD and get in their to put things right. Many distros can use the instalation CD as a rescue. Otherwise, you can find several on the web.

I've got a Mandrake 9.1 beta 3 disk. will that do it? How?

Boot from the CD1 and push the Fkey for options. Before you try that, check a few things:
Does ctrl-alt-backspace do anything?
Does ctr-alt-F2 get you to a login?
If so, you can set the default runlevel in /etc/inittab and shutdown/reboot.

No, neither ctrl-alt-backspace or ctr-alt-F2 do anything because the keyboard doesn't work.

Also, during boot-up it says that initrd can't unmount. It's right after the option to press "I" to enter interactive startup appears.

ctrl-alt-F2 is a command for the OS to switch consoles. I am not sure what this means but it looks like rescue mode will be required.

I've looked at the docs for GRUB and cannot figure out how to specify runlevel. In LILO you boot, hit TAB or hold down ALT or SHIFT.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LILO-2.html#ss2.3

That will give a kind of command line like
BOOT:
Usually, one would type linux <enter>
If you type linux 1 <enter> you should boot into runlevel 1 with a single user and no daemons running...

If you have a Slack installation, prepare to do an install , but switch consoles and poke around your files.
mount will show where they are mounted.
cd mountpoint
Then you can login as root and edit etc/inittab
#vi etc/inittab
Change a line like
id:5:initdefault:
to
id:1:initdefault:
In vi , you type i to get to insert mode, use PgDn or arrows to get to the place, use backspace or delete to edit then esc : wq to exit
If you mess up the editting esc :q! will exit without writing.

Now, your system will boot normally to runlevel 1 without a GUI so you can play.
Likely, there is something terribly wrong with etc/X11/XF86Config
less etc/X11/XF86Config will let you see what is there.
You can run an xconfigurator programme too, if you need to start from scratch.
Let us know what you find.
less var/log/XFree86.log or .0.log should show what happened the last time the xserver started. There will be clues there, I hope.

If you make no progress this way, you could just re-install. It may be faster. You can use the rescue to retrieve any work you have done or configuration files you need to keep.

OK, I figured out how to get to "text mode." I checked out my var/log/XFree86.0.log and at the very beginning of the file there are three lines that don't look right:

_XSERVTransSocketOpenCOTSServer: Unable to open socket for inet6
_XSERVTransOpen: transport open failed for inet6/localhost.localdomain:0
_XSERVTransMakeAllOpenCOTSServerListeners: failed to open listener for inet6

If that is immediately followed by Fatal server error unable to listen...
http://mariner.cs.ucdavis.edu/slackw...-xdm-crash.txt
This link shows a fix.

It sounds like it is just a warning in your case and not to worry.

Are there any error messages "EE" further down? Perhaps you can paste the whole thing...

If you actually get to show the desktop if you do startx, then I doubt there is too much wrong with XF86Config. You could try a different display manager.

http://slackware.com/book/index.php?source=c1364.html

Here's how to set the display manager:
http://slackware.com/book/index.php?source=x1637.html

Well, I tried to edit the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/
Xservers file but it is readonly.

It says I have to "add ! to override." Add ! to what and when?

In vi, if you are root and want tooverride readonly, you add a ! to the w command as
<esc>:wq!
If you really do not want to do a write to the disc, use q! instead of wq or wq!

Thanks! I edited the file, but still have the same problem.

1)There are no error messages in /var/log/Xfree86.log
2)A different display manager doesn't fix it.
3)The hardware works at boot time.

We are running out of leads. I am getting desperate. Please paste in your reply
a)The entire /etc/X11/XF86Config file
b)The entire /var/log/XFree86.log file
c)Any messages resulting from the following command executed in text mode:
startx > textfile1 2>textfile2
i.e. paste textfile1 and 2 content here
d)Any messages in /var/log/messages from the time you typed startx onward

If this seems too much work, perhaps we should cut our losses and re-install after saving anything of value, perhaps with a different distro. If you have the space, you could install two distros, one that you know works and this difficult one. Dual booting works with Linux and it is much easier to diagnose things with a built-in rescue mode.

Yeah! I downloaded, burned and installed Arklinux's stable version and it's running fine. I thought it would be fun to try to solve these problems so I could learn more, but it just wasn't gonna happen. Thanks RobertP for you help.

By the way, this problem seems to be one of the most difficult problems to solve. I wonder what is at the root of these "no keyboard and mouse" problems. I guess I'll never know, but that is one of the reasons I chose Linux over Windows.

Thanks again, RobertP