Mouse cursor disappears and keyboard limited to hotkeys after exiting screensaver

[Dovel]

Binary package hint: xscreensaver

Sometimes when exiting xscreensaver, the mouse cursor will disappear as soon as the mouse is moved. Keyboard use also seems to be limited to hotkeys. The only solution I have found is to log out of the x session and in again.

I am running Dapper and the likely apps running at any one time would be Firefox, Thunderbird, gaim and gmail notifier.

[Samuel Vivian (svivian)]

I have seen this behavior as well. In many cases, I have retained keyboard control in whatever application had focus when the screensaver activated, but cannot navigate the desktop. Hotkeys do work, but I am usually unable to cleanly log out so I can restart X. I usually wind up having to hard reboot (X session freezes).

I am running Kubuntu 6.06 LTS on x86 architecture (Pentium D system), with 2GB of ram, and an Nvidia graphics card (I think it's a 4200, has 32 MB of RAM) running two monitors.

[Dovel (dov01)]

I seem to have managed to solve most probs with x-screensaver. I also
had an issue where only one screensaver would come up, regardless of any
setting I may have set. All problems seem to have been solved however,
by completely removing gnome-screensaver using Synaptic.

Your problem sounds identical to what I had, I was running Ubuntu 6.06
on a Pentium III 600Mhz with 384MB of RAM. (Hey! I'm a student!) but
I've just upgraded to Edgy Eft.

Samuel Vivian wrote:
> I have seen this behavior as well. In many cases, I have retained
> keyboard control in whatever application had focus when the screensaver
> activated, but cannot navigate the desktop. Hotkeys do work, but I am
> usually unable to cleanly log out so I can restart X. I usually wind up
> having to hard reboot (X session freezes).
>
> I am running Kubuntu 6.06 LTS on x86 architecture (Pentium D system),
> with 2GB of ram, and an Nvidia graphics card (I think it's a 4200, has
> 32 MB of RAM) running two monitors.
>
>

[Samuel Vivian (svivian)]

Update on hardware: My graphics card is an Nvidia 5500 with 128MB. Setup is the same otherwise. Has anyone looked at this bug yet? What would push it out of "Unconfirmed" state?

[Dovel (dov01)]

I don't think the graphics card is a factor as I'm running an old Intel
82801 and the problem sounds the same. What programs are you running
when the problem occurs?

I have been running Gaim, Openoffice, Gmail Notify, Firefox, Thunderbird
and XMMS when the problem has occurred.

I always have XMMS and Gmail Notify running, so I think that they can be
ruled out as the problem was more sporadic than constant. Gaim I am
suspicious of.

Have you removed any other Screensavers completely?

Samuel Vivian wrote:
> Update on hardware: My graphics card is an Nvidia 5500 with 128MB. Setup
> is the same otherwise. Has anyone looked at this bug yet? What would
> push it out of "Unconfirmed" state?
>
>

[Samuel Vivian (svivian)]

No, I didn't remove the kscreensaver. I did disable it, and I don't think it was an issue, because sometimes I could leave my machine overnight with no problem, and sometimes, even being on screensaver for a couple of minutes was enough to require reboot. I generally run Firefox, Evolution, Openoffice, Konquerer, and Gajim. Sometimes I'd have xmms or kaffeine up. I do run an unusual setup in that I have two monitors, and if I run them under Xinerama I get screen redraw problems in rdesktop, so I turn off Xinerama and have two separate X sessions running. I'll try removing kscreensaver, and then go through the xscreensaver install.

[Samuel Vivian (svivian)]

Lost the cursor again today. Kscreensaver is not installed. Konquerer, Konsole and Evolution were the only applications running. When I came out of xscreensaver, Konquerer had brought up a message saying new media had been detected, and what did I want to do with it (a USB CD drive had been plugged in while it was in screensaver). Was able to switch to another shell, log in and kill xscreensaver. When I switched back to Shell 7, I had my cursor, but X restarted and I had to log in again. Once logged in, I couldn't get Evolution to launch, so I rebooted.

[Dovel (dov01)]

I also lost the cursor yesterday for the first time since I got rid of
gnome screensaver several weeks ago. I had OpenOffice, nautilus, xmms,
gmail notifier and maybe Firefox running. This is the first time it's
happened on Edgy Eft as well. The version of x-screeensaver I have
installed is: 4.24-4ubuntu2. Also installed is xscreensaver-data
(4.24-4ubuntu2), rss-glx (0.8.1-3ubuntu2) and xscreensaver-gl
(4.24-4ubuntu2).

Samuel Vivian wrote:
> Lost the cursor again today. Kscreensaver is not installed. Konquerer,
> Konsole and Evolution were the only applications running. When I came
> out of xscreensaver, Konquerer had brought up a message saying new media
> had been detected, and what did I want to do with it (a USB CD drive had
> been plugged in while it was in screensaver). Was able to switch to
> another shell, log in and kill xscreensaver. When I switched back to
> Shell 7, I had my cursor, but X restarted and I had to log in again.
> Once logged in, I couldn't get Evolution to launch, so I rebooted.
>
>

[Samuel Vivian (svivian)]

Lost the cursor again yesterday. Running Evolution, Psi, Konquerer, OpenOffice, KPdf, FireFox, and Konsole. The system had been idle, and went into screensaver automatically. When I moved the mouse, the screensaver cancelled, but the cursor never reappeared. I was able to switch to another session, kill xscreensaver, and switch back to session 7, but X restarted again like last time, so I rebooted again to make sure everything was running cleanly.

[Samuel Vivian (svivian)]

Happened again this morning. Evolution, Konquerer, Firefox and Konsole running. Did the same thing, switch to another session, killall xscreensaver, go back to session 7. When I get back to session 7, it restarts X. New information is that it is moving the mouse after the switch/killall/switch-back process that causes X to restart.

[Dovel (dov01)]

Which screen hacks have you got installed? I think I've only one lost my
cursor with my current configuration. Poss. because I only have a couple
of packages of hacks installed. Gl and xscreensaver-extra.

[Samuel Vivian (svivian)]

I have all the extras, both the regular and the GL. However, I don't use the random screensaver setting. I only use the "Intermomentary" hack (currently). I have had the problem of losing the cursor with a couple of the other hacks as well, both GL and non-GL, so I don't think it is the particular hack that is causing the problem. I think it is a problem with the xscreensaver program itself not handing cursor control back to X correctly, or not exiting cleanly. When the screensaver is running, if I hit a key, or move the mouse, I get the username/password dialog box. The cursor will work fine there, but cannot move outside that box. Then, after I enter the username/password to unlock, and return to the desktop, the cursor doesn't show up anymore.

[Samuel Vivian (svivian)]

Lost the cursor again last week. Running Evolution, Konsole, Konquerer, Firefox, and Psi. I hope this goes to "confirmed" soon. I had heard that there was an effort to get Zawinski to start working with the distribututions, or at least the X team, to sort out these problems. Maybe that will go somewhere.

[Dovel (dov01)]

Have you tried removing the hacks? I have only had one instance of this
problem since diminishing the number of hacks installed

On 12/19/06, Samuel Vivian <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> Lost the cursor again last week. Running Evolution, Konsole, Konquerer,
> Firefox, and Psi. I hope this goes to "confirmed" soon. I had heard that
> there was an effort to get Zawinski to start working with the
> distribututions, or at least the X team, to sort out these problems.
> Maybe that will go somewhere.
>
> --
> Mouse cursor disappears and keyboard limited to hotkeys after exiting
> screensaver
> https://launchpad.net/bugs/57774
>

[Matthew Woerly (nattgew)]

If you still have this problem, we can change it to confirmed...

[Dovel (dov01)]

Unfortunately I haven't kept up with xscreensaver in Gutsy, as I've been using compiz-fusion and cannot consistently keep xscreensaver running. Compiz won't seem to give the daemon access to the root window at log-in.

The original problem did continue, for memory, until at least Feisty, though I was able to minimize the problem by not using screensavers from the ?gl-extra? package. When I get around to figuring out the compiz compatibility issues, I'll do more testing.

Many apologies for the inexact information.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

[Alfas (alfonsasstonis)]

It happens most of the time.

[Alfas (alfonsasstonis)]

I reported this bug using ubuntu-bug, but can not see any information that it collected. Maybe I just do not know where to look?