Unclutter stops mouse functioning properly in fullscreen games

[Alan]

Binary package hint: unclutter

When playing games fullscreen with unclutter running, unclutter considers the pointer to be inactive and will try to grab the pointer (and hide it). This causes the mouse/crosshair in the game to jump to the center of the screen some seconds after moving it (whatever the unclutter -delay is set to).

Solution would be to either fix unclutter or to kill it when switching to fullscreen.

[Joey Hess (joeyh)]

# Automatically generated email from bts, devscripts version 2.7.95.1
severity 237319 normal

[Klaus Ethgen (klaus-ethgen)]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Package: unclutter
Version: 8-1
Followup-For: Bug #237319
Severity: critical

This Bug has to be critical as it makes all GL-software unusable.

I search long long time for the source of the jumping mouse problem and
also I thougt the bug is in the glu package. So it is very important to
fix this bug.

The original reporter suggest the way to disable unclutter in
applications which use opengl.

- -- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (800, 'unstable'), (700, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.4.28
Locale: LANG=de_DE, LC_CTYPE=de_DE (charmap=ISO-8859-1) (ignored: LC_ALL set to de_DE)

Versions of packages unclutter depends on:
ii libc6 2.3.2.ds1-19 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii xlibs 4.3.0.dfsg.1-9 X Keyboard Extension (XKB) configu

- -- no debconf information
- --
Klaus Ethgen http://www.ethgen.de/
pub 2048R/D1A4EDE5 2000-02-26 Klaus Ethgen <email address hidden>
Fingerprint: D7 67 71 C4 99 A6 D4 FE EA 40 30 57 3C 88 26 2B
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[Joey Hess (joeyh)]

severity 237319 important
thanks

critical severity for this bug is grossly inflated. Unclutter does not
cause data loss, does not break other software, does not introduce a
security hole. important is the correct severity, since this bug may
make unclutter unusable to people who use some opengl software.

I'd suspect that one of the unclutter switches would avoid the
problimatic behavior. Since I cannot usefully use opengl software, I
can't reproduce the bug to tell.

--
see shy jo

[Joey Hess (joeyh)]

Klaus Ethgen wrote:
> I played with the switches but nothing helps. But it is strange that you
> cannot reproduce it. I do so on different systemes. That's the reason
> why I did need so long to find the source of the bug.
>
> Just start unclutter and then tuxracer, move the mouse a bit and wait
> 5s.

I can't reproduce it because no opengl app can run on my system at
anything approaching a usable speed. Thanks for the info about the
switches.

--
see shy jo

[Joshua-nirmalvihar (joshua-nirmalvihar)]

Package: unclutter
Version: 8-1
Followup-For: Bug #237319

Confirmed. glob2 and tecnoballz are unplayable while running unclutter.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.11.8-acpi2
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8

Versions of packages unclutter depends on:
ii libc6 2.3.2.ds1-22 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii xlibs 4.3.0.dfsg.1-6 X Window System client libraries m

-- no debconf information

[Dominique Dumont (domi)]

Package: unclutter
Version: 8-5
Followup-For: Bug #237319

Hello

I've found that the problems also appears with qemu.

Whenever the mouse is considered idle within qemu, unclutter will hide
the mouse pointer.

When I move the mouse pointer, it will appear at the top right of qemu
window.

Using qemu might be easier to reproduce the bug than opengl programs.

HTH

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (990, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-4-686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)

Versions of packages unclutter depends on:
ii libc6 2.3.6.ds1-13 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii libx11-6 2:1.0.3-6 X11 client-side library

unclutter recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information

[Adrian Fita (nimbvs)]

Package: unclutter
Version: 8-5
Followup-For: Bug #237319

I am also experiencing the same problems. When I run unclutter, the
mouse in the applications using SDL jumps to the center of
the screen at regular intervals.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-4-686
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages unclutter depends on:
ii libc6 2.3.6.ds1-13 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii libx11-6 2:1.0.3-7 X11 client-side library

unclutter recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information

[gwern (gwern0)]

I'd just like to note that this is still very much a bug. Three years and two systems later (both a Debian testing i386 and a Gentoo ~amd64) later, I still get this deeply annoying bug, so it hasn't gone away and is certainly not Debian-specific.

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.

[Alan (mrintegrity)]

Binary package hint: unclutter

When playing games fullscreen with unclutter running, unclutter considers the pointer to be inactive and will try to grab the pointer (and hide it). This causes the mouse/crosshair in the game to jump to the center of the screen some seconds after moving it (whatever the unclutter -delay is set to).

Solution would be to either fix unclutter or to kill it when switching to fullscreen.

[Alan (mrintegrity)]

debian bug: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=237319

[Nico Golde (nion)]

Hi,
what about bumping the severity of this bug? I also
experienced this and searched a very long time for a reason
before noticing it is unclutter that causes this. I even
thought it's my openbox running :)

Joey, do you have the possibility to run opengl applications
now?

Kind regards
Nico

--
Nico Golde - http://www.ngolde.de - <email address hidden> - GPG: 0x73647CFF
For security reasons, all text in this mail is double-rot13 encrypted.

[Ben Hutchings (benh-debian)]

# Automatically generated email from bts, devscripts version 2.10.19
reassign 413282 unclutter
forcemerge 237319 413282

[Aurelien Jarno (aurelien-aurel32)]

reassign 493144 libsdl1.2debian
severity 227800 grave
merge 227800 493144
reassign 227800 unclutter
severity 237319 grave
merge 237319 227800
thanks

> On Sat, Aug 09, 2008 at 07:11:49PM -0700, Kingsley G. Morse Jr. wrote:
> > I see the same, or a similar, bug.
> >
> > Every few seconds, the mouse pointer in version
> > 0.9.1-5 of qemu jumps to another spot in qemu's
> > window.
>
> As Lucas is a few meters from me, we have been able to progress a bit
> about that. The problem comes from a bad interaction between SDL and
> Xorg. The bug has been actually already reported sometimes ago, but it
> seems it happens on more machines now.
>
> It is reproducible with other SDL applications like planetpenguin-racer.
>
> A workaround is to set the environment variable SDL_MOUSE_RELATIVE to 0.
>

After some more search, we have found this is due to the unclutter
daemon. A bug has already been reported there 4 years ago, so I am
merging the bugs.

--
  .''`. Aurelien Jarno | GPG: 1024D/F1BCDB73
 : :' : Debian developer | Electrical Engineer
 `. `' <email address hidden> | <email address hidden>
   `- people.debian.org/~aurel32 | www.aurel32.net

[Aurelien Jarno (aurel32)]

# Automatically generated email from bts, devscripts version 2.10.35
forcemerge 237319 227800 493144

[Don Armstrong (don-debian)]

debug 10
unmerge 227800 237391
merge 227800 237319
forcemerge 227800 237319
thanks

Don Armstrong

--
"There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
We don't believe this to be a coincidence."
 -- Jeremy S. Anderson

http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu

[Daniel Baumann (daniel-debian-org)]

severity 227800 important
severity 237319 important
severity 413282 important
severity 493144 important
thanks

using unclutter does have some side-effects.

--
Address: Daniel Baumann, Burgunderstrasse 3, CH-4562 Biberist
Email: <email address hidden>
Internet: http://people.panthera-systems.net/~daniel-baumann/

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Is this symptom still reproducible in 8.10 RC or later?

[Michael Blakeley (mike+ubuntu)]

Yes, in 8.10 final with kvm in fullscreen mode (so not just games). Taking kvm out of fullscreen mode stops the problem, if and only if unclutter is started with the '-not QEMU' option.

[zenzike (zenzike)]

I can confirm that this bug still exists. A workaround is to use the following export before launching unclutter:

export SDL_MOUSE_RELATIVE=0

[Tuxsimon (simmpan99)]

what ??? im really new to ubuntu installd it yesterday
Where do I write code?
or where do i gonna export?

[Tuxsimon (simmpan99)]

PLEASE REPLY FAST

[Tuxsimon (simmpan99)]

Or if i gonna type it in the terminal? answer fast plz?

[Ricardo Ferreira (ricardofcf)]

I can certainly confirm this behaviour. It's happening for me under Ubuntu 10.04 while playing games such as Secret Maryo Chronicles or Neverball.

[Brian Rogers (brian-rogers)]

Looks like a duplicate of bug 61105...