Local mouse pointer disappears

[Rocko]

Binary package hint: vinagre

When you first connect to a VNC session with vinagre, you have both a 'local' mouse pointer, which moves smoothly in concert with your mouse movements (compare with xtightvnc where this local mouse pointer is a circle rather than an arrow), and the 'remote' mouse pointer for the remote computer, which lags behind the local pointer depending on the bandwidth of the connection. This is all as expected.

But when you move the local mouse outside the window displaying the remote computer (eg move the mouse into Vinagre's bookmarks column or title bar) and then back into the window displaying the remote computer, the 'local' mouse pointer vanishes.

This makes using vinagre quite frustrating because the 'lagging' mouse pointer gives poor feedback and you continuously overshoot menus, etc.

Intrepid 8.10 kernel 2.7.26-5 amd64
vinagre 2.24.0-0ubuntu1

This also happens on the Hardy version.

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

Correction - it doesn't happen in Hardy 32 bit. It is still happening in Intrepid, though.

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

I've confirmed it on a second computer running Ubuntu 8.10.

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

Update: vinagre is currently at 2.24.1-0ubuntu1, Ubuntu is using kernel 2.6.27-8-generic.

[Riccardo 'c10ud' (c10ud)]

i confirm this bug :), i'm using intrepid with latest updates and proposed+backports (6th jan 2009)

[Frederic Van Espen (frederic-ve)]

I can confirm this too. Running Intrepid with 2.6.27-9 kernel

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

Set to importance 'wishlist'? I thought that was for enhancements? But this is a regression, since it worked fine in Hardy.

Perhaps Ubuntu should change to installing another vnc viewer as default. The bookmark etc features in vinagre are nice, but it doesn't support compression and when you lose the mouse pointer it becomes a real pain to use.

[Emilio Pozuelo Monfort (pochu)]

Sorry for that, I think I misunderstood the issue.

Back to undecided as I'm not sure I fully understand what's going on. I'll try to reproduce it to understand what's happening.

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

Emilio, were you able to reproduce this?

It's more obvious if you do a remote connection over the web, since the lag between the remote computer mouse and the vinagre mouse is greater over a slow connection, so initially you will see two mouse pointers, but you only get one when you move the mouse to another (non-vinagre) window and back.

ie vinagre must be deliberately setting the local mouse pointer icon to null (or a blank image) when it has focus. It doesn't do this initially, but it does once the mouse moves out of vinagre and back in.

[Chris Roddy (cmr)]

the remote cursor is hideously slow, and on top of that it's not even the right remote cursor (for whatever reason it's white instead of my chosen DMZ Black).

i don't care about the remote cursor, but hiding the local cursor is extremely user-hostile and makes me about 1/4 as productive when i am connecting to a VNC server.

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

Sent upstream, thanks for the report!
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=577580

[Frederic Van Espen (frederic-ve)]

I can confirm this happening on jaunty 32-bit. As soon as you have moved out of the VNC screen, the local mousepointer will disappear when you move back in.

[Frederic Van Espen (frederic-ve)]

Manually compiling the newer versions of vinagre does not work. I have compiled version 0.5.2 (the same version as in hardy) and that seems to fix it.

I first tried compiling 2.24.2 and 2.26.1. Both suffered the same issue

[Chris Roddy (cmr)]

it is also possible that this is a bug in libgtk-vnc

[Eddie Dunn (eddie-dunn)]

As stated above, this is extremely annoying and user hostile. Otherwise I like Vinagre.

I have it in Jaunty 64bit. Does anyone know if it is fixed in Karmic?

[Jon Storry (jon-storry)]

I am seeing this in Karmic, but it's even more of an issue for me as I would like to use it when I vnc into my Internet tablet. As my my Internet tablet doesn't have a cursor to start with, and I can't see the local one I am unable to use Vinagre at all.

[Riccardo 'c10ud' (c10ud)]

still there (karmic)

[Randy LeJeune (lejeunerandy-fastmail)]

Happening to my PC as well (Karmic).

[Shed007 (steveoneill1)]

Just installed Ubuntu 9.1 today and the mouse pointer is disappearing.

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

The bug is still present in version 2.29.91-0ubuntu1 (Ubuntu 10.04).

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

The upstream bug (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=577580) has a patch for libgtk-vnc that fixes the bug.

For those interested, you can apply it with:

1. Make a folder for the gtk-vnc git source code and download it:

mkdir gtk-vnc
cd gtk-vnc
git clone git://git.gnome.org/gtk-vnc

2. Apply the patch (http://bugzilla-attachments.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=148702)

wget http://bugzilla-attachments.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=148702 -o pointer-patch.diff
patch -p1 < pointerpatch.diff

3. Run the autobuild.sh command and install all the dev libraries it tells you are missing.

./autobuild.sh

I needed to install at least build-essential, libtool, python-gtk2-dev, and libsasl2-dev (ie Synaptic or with the sudo apt-get install command).

I got the error "libtool: link: only absolute run-paths are allowed" at the end of the build, but the new library had been built successfully as build/src/.libs/libgtk-vnc-1.0.so.0.0.1 and I just needed to link it to /usr/lib/libgtk-vnc-1.0.so to get it working.

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

The fix has been applied upstream to gtk-vnc: any chance we can get this in Ubuntu 10.04?

[SalsaDoom (salsadoom)]

I can confirm this is still present as of April 27th in Lucid. Filed off the appropriate information -- they got 2 days to fix it before release ;)

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

I checked that the pointer patch works with the latest Ubuntu gtk-vnc 0.3.10-2ubuntu2 (source is at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/lucid/+source/gtk-vnc/). Somehow I doubt that anyone will be applying it with only two days to go, though!

For those interested, you can build it with something along the lines of (I'm assuming you already have patch-pointer.diff from http://bugzilla-attachments.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=148702 along with the latest Ubuntu source and diff files in the current directory):

tar xvf gtk-vnc_0.3.10.orig.tar.gz
tar xvf gtk-vnc_0.3.10-2ubuntu2.diff.gz
cd gtk-vnc_0.3.10
patch -p1 < ../gtk-vnc_0.3.10-2ubuntu2.diff
patch -p1 < ../patch-pointer.diff
./configure --prefix=/usr
make && sudo make install