>>> Also, when I emerged xorg, it pulled in evdev, keyboard and mouse
>>> drivers as I have them set in make.conf.
>>>        
> That's interesting.... it raises a question - at least to myself - if
> there's a particular USE setting to trigger evdev.  Examination of
> the /usr/portage/profiles/use.desc file shows no indication of such.  Is
> there some other indicator that should be part of the make.conf file
> beyond the USE settings and the INPUT_DEVICES setting?
>
> Final note: for my rebuild, I'm doing so on a separate partition, logged
> in there so it should be a clean environment to work in.
>
> Roger S.
>
>
>    

On my system, this is the line that tells portage to pull in the 
keyboard and mouse drivers:

INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse evdev"

This line tells it I use nvidia drivers:

VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia nv"

Nothing in my USE line that would pull them it that I can see.  That 
should also work on yours if you have those in your make.conf.  Also, 
you should get the same result if you unpack the tarball then do a 
emerge --sync.  This isn't in the guide but as soon as I do the chroot, 
I sync and do a emerge -uvDNa world to make sure everything is up to 
date.  After that I get all the portage helpers, gentoolkit, eix and 
friends then go back to the guide.   I'm not sure I would recommend that 
to be in the guide but it is how I always do it.

Dale

:-)  :-)