(I tried to send this patch to linux-input@, but it seems to be currently having some problems, so I'm going directly to LKML). Certain (broken) pieces of South Bridge hardware will respond to i8042_read_status() on boot with 0x0, despite there not being a real i8042 controller hooked up in the south bridge. This can cause the detection for the i8042 to return a "phantom" device, which hangs up later initialization. Note that using "i8042.nokbd" and/or "i8042.noaux" do not help with this, since this shows up during i8042_controller_check() (before either of those options are checked). This patch adds a command-line option "i8042.disable", which just completely disables any checking for the i8042 controller. Signed-off-by: Chris Lalancette