The "waiting" cursor won't go away

[Teo]

The mouse cursor has remained trapped in the rotating-circle animated "waiting-for-something-to-complete" status.
I have closed all programs that I had opened, I have opened and used some, closed them again and it's still there rotating as if there was some operation in progress. It's been more than half an hour.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: unity 5.16.0-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-33.52-generic 3.2.31
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-33-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu14
Architecture: i386
CompizPlugins: [core,composite,opengl,decor,vpswitch,mousepoll,compiztoolbox,snap,commands,place,resize,session,regex,grid,wall,move,gnomecompat,imgpng,animation,fade,unitymtgrabhandles,workarounds,scale,expo,ezoom,unityshell]
Date: Wed Oct 31 10:37:18 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-05-17 (166 days ago)

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

This might not be Unity but an application leaking the cursor state. As such, can you figure out what application/window it is that is changing the cursor in the first place?

[Teo (teo1978)]

I don't know what application changed the cursor in the first place, and I couldn't figure out a posteriori, because even after closing (apparently) all the application the busy cursor was still there.

Btw in the meantime, while I was using Google Chrome (after closing and reopening it) to report the bug, more than a few times I saw the cursor change for a fraction of a second to the arrow form and then come back to the busy circle again.

IF an application even _can_ leak the cursor state and leave the cursor as busy even after closing it (I don't know whether this is the case, because the application that caused it may have been some applet in the tray or anything that I didn't ever close - but IF that is the case) then there is also a bug or a design flaw in either unity or xorg or whomever is responsible for the cursor (if an application changes the status to busy, the status _must_ be changed back if the application dies; it would be wrong to leave it completely to the application's responsibility)

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

How frequently does this happen? Has it ever happened in the past? This seems like an application leaking cursor state as Daniel said, which is a very, very rare thing on most systems.

[John Kim (kotux)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please answer these questions:

* Is this reproducible?
* If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?

This will help us to find and resolve the problem.
---
Ubuntu Bug Squad volunteer triager
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

[Teo (teo1978)]

Not reproducible.
It happened to me just that one time, as far as I remember.

Again, if it is even just _possible_ that an application can happen to "leak" cursor state and affect the behavior of the cursor for the whole system, something is either buggy or badly designed at the system level (don't know whether it's Unity or Xorg or what, but not just the application that triggers it).

[Andrea Azzarone (azzar1)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test it on a currently supported Ubuntu version. When you test it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running apport-collect <bug #> and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Unity because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for unity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]