Running unclutter without "-noevent" causes focus problems for Firefox and Thunderbird

[Mikko Rantalainen]

It seems that the default configuration for "unclutter" causes Firefox and Thunderbird (probably all XUL applications) to randomly lose focus.

Examples:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/1231588
https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=111&t=117704&start=15
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/1234470

The default configuration in `/etc/default/unclutter` should probably include '-noevents' in addition to current flags in EXTRA_OPTS. Adding '-grab' should be considered, too.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: unclutter 8-18
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-33.48~precise1-generic 3.8.13.11
Uname: Linux 3.8.0-33-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu17.6
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Nov 27 13:25:11 2013
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120823.1)
MarkForUpload: True
SourcePackage: unclutter
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Axel Beckert (xtaran)]

Can you check if the problem still appears with unclutter 8-19? It's available from Saucy onwards.

See http://packages.qa.debian.org/u/unclutter/news/20130502T003252Z.html (or https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unclutter/+bug/385034) for the changelog entry.

According to http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=266118#17 the patch applied in 8-19 has a similar effect as -noevents except that it still works with some more window managers.

With regards to -grab: That can causes similar problems, so I'm reluctant putting this in by default.

BTW, the issues fixed in 8-19 don't affect all XULRunner applications as it e.g. doesn't affect conkeror (only available in Debian) while Firefox/Iceweasel does have known issues in combination with unclutter 8-18. But these issues are flickering as reported in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unclutter/+bug/385034

[Mikko Rantalainen (mira)]

As you can see in the bug report, I'm still running precise (12.04) so I cannot easily upgrade to unclutter version 8-19.

Reading the debian bug report I'm pretty sure that this bug is something else because I haven't seen any extra CPU usage. The incorrect focus movement seems to be single-shot process, as far as I know.

The only thing that goes wrong is that the keyboard focus is in incorrect window (I don't know how Firefox/Thunderbird creates the windows and how it's possible that the window manager renders focus indicators in one window and keyboard input goes to another window. If Firefox/Thunderbird does process wide input handling, then it does make sense and the only thing going wrong is Firefox/Thunderbird internal focus book keeping).

[Mikko Rantalainen (mira)]

I believe that Firefox and Thunderbird are standalone programs running on Ubuntu; there's no dependency on XULRunner and the directories /usr/lib/firefox and /usr/lib/thunderbird seem to contain different libxul.so implementations. As such, it may be that XULRunner is okay but Firefox and Thunderbird are faulty.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Sparhawk (sparhawkthesecond)]

More technical information her: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=625149

Mozilla devs won't fix it, and suggest that it's unclutter that should provide a fix. :(
That is from the link above, and also here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=923349

[Brylie Christopher Oxley (brylie)]

I was experiencing this issue on OSGeo Live, which uses Xubuntu.

I have followed instructions and set the unclutter settings as follows:
```
EXTRA_OPTS="-idle 2 -root -noevents"
```

Running the following command resolved the issue:
```
unclutter -idle 2 -root -noevents &
disown -h
```