Ah. The problem is the priority order of handlers. In common.init, the two default_inherit actions should be moved to the front of the list before all the calls. Then when n810.conf is loaded, it will have higher priority. That eliminates the need for doing the if checks in common.conf. To get rid of the variable initialization bug, add to the n810.init.main as the last action, "if $hal{/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/platform_slide:button.state.value} keyboard_slide_close keyboard_slide_open" That should fix initialization