Desktop icons and the mouse may reside in areas that are covered by no monitor.

[bp]

I'm extending my laptop monitor with a native resolution of 1366×768 with an external display with a native resolution of 1280×1024. This situation is poorly handled.

Here's a representation of my setup, which I mirrored in the Monitor configuration:

╔════════╤════════╗
║░░░░░░░░│▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒║
║░░░░░░░░│▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒║
╟────────┘▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒║
║▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒║
║▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒║
║▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒║
║▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓┌───────╢
║▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓│░░░░░░░║
╚═════════╧═══════╝

▓ laptop monitor
▒ external monitor
░ area that is not covered by any monitor
═ shape of the virtual desktop
─ shape of the area that is actually covered by monitors

The ░ area should not be eligible for mouse placement and desktop icon placement, but it is in Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 under GNOME (including Unity). Other desktop systems may also be affected but I didn't try them all.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: gnome (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.33-generic 2.6.35.4
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Oct 8 13:40:37 2010
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: meta-gnome2

[bp (badpazzword)]

As suggested by the guys at #ubuntu-bug

[bugbot (bugbot)]

Hey bp,

Thanks for testing maverick during its development period. Unfortunately it looks like this bug report didn't get attention during the maverick development period. But I see there's not been more comments on the bug since the release, which makes me wonder if this is still an issue for you?

If you've not seen this issue since maverick's release yourself, it may have been solved by kernel or X or other updates that occurred late in the release; if so, would you mind please closing the bug for us? Go to the URL mentioned in this bug report, click the yellow icon(s) in the status column and set to 'Fix Released'.

If you no longer have the hardware needed to reproduce the problem, or otherwise feel the bug no longer needs tracked in Launchpad, you can set the status to 'Invalid'.

If you are the original reporter and still have this issue, just reply to this email saying so. (Or set the bug status to Confirmed.) If you are able to re-test this against 11.04 Natty Narwhal (our current development focus) and find the issue still affects Natty, please also run 'apport-collect <bug-number>' while running natty, which will add fresh logs and debug data, and flag it for the Ubuntu-X development team to look at.

[bp (badpazzword)]

Marking invalid for now until I can test the issue again.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

bp, this bug report suggests that you are using Ubuntu-10.10 can you please check if the issue is there with Ubuntu-11.04 beta-2 and let us know about the situation.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

this needs "pointer barrier" support in the xserver, which 11.04 won't have.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

bug 752098 seems like the very same issue as well.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

This is not specific to Unity so closed the Unity bugs.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

bp, this bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? If so, could you please test for this with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ .

If it remains an issue, could you please run the following command in the development release from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal), as it will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report:

apport-collect -p xorg-server REPLACE-WITH-BUG-NUMBER

Please note, given you already have done this in a prior release, performing this on a release prior to Trusty would not be helpful.

Thank you for your understanding.

Helpful bug reporting tips:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs

[bp (badpazzword)]

Thanks for the poke. Unfortunately, I won't be able to try and repro on Trusty until mid February. :/

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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