During the configuration at the first real boot of Debian, I never got a chance to do a standard xorgconfig, and now my mouse and keyboard don't work. I have KDM set up, so the X escape sequence just returns to the login screen, and I can't pull down the menu. Is there a way to get out of X without a mouse?

what is your xorg file

o/p of /var/log/messages


what errors are u getting

I honestly am unable to check anything, since I have KDM set up. The cursor won't respond to movement, and the keyboard has the wrong keymap.

You should be able to switch to a console with CTRL+ALT+F1 / F6 and disable KDM using
You don't even need to stop it, as what you need is to take a glance at the logs in /var/log/Xorg.0.log or in $HOME/.xsession-errors, which you can do without having to do anything on the X.

You can also try to edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf from there and take a look at the "corepointer" section. Normally this should be enough to load the module, but you should also use debian's module configuration system modconf and load your mouse's modules.

Sometimes there is a little precedence issue related to USB and PS/2 modules. I don't know where Debian stores the list of modules to be load, but the only thing you need is to get the PS/2 modules evdev and psmouse to load before any USB modules such as usb-core.

after making changes to the modules run update-modules

Hope this helps,
try it anyway and post the error log. Please only the 20-50 final lines:

I just had the wrong protocol entered for the mouse.

I can't figure out the X.org package name is.

Now that I've rebooted into XFree86, I have no sound and no mouse movement. I didn't do anything other than rebooting after editing XF86Config-4.

Shouldn't there be a "recovery mode" to choose from in the grub boot loader screen? That should boot your system into a single user mode, ask for the root user's password, and bypass kdm, so that you can fix the X configuration from the CLI.

If you've got XFree86, then the file to edit is /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 but if you've installed X.org, then you should edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf . "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86" will edit the XFree86 config file and "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" will edit the X.org config file. However, if you've already manually edited one of these files, then you need to use a text editor, like "nano /etc/X11/XF86Config-4" or "nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf".

Well, with the exact samd device and 'auto' driver, it worked before I rebooted. And that doesn't explain my sound problems.

Which packages are needed to do a complete intall of X.org?

"apt-get install x-window-system"

X.org is currently only available in debian unstable. Debian testing and debian stable both have XFree86.

just use ps-2 protocol for timebeing and later u can change over to imps2