Synaptics touchpad driver fails with error: Synaptics no synaptics event device found (checked 12 nodes)

Problem:

The synaptics touchpad driver fails to load under X-windows. The following error can be found in /var/log/Xorg.0.log: 

Synaptics no synaptics event device found (checked 12 nodes)

Details:

When the operating system boots, the following character device is sometimes not created: 

/dev/input/event2

Effected Distributions:

Solution:

Add the following to /etc/init.d/boot.local: 

if [ ! -c /dev/input/event2 ]; then
   mknod /dev/input/event2 c 13 66
fi

Restart the system for the changes to take effect.