Mouse cursor 'sticks' on screen 2 of dual head display

[Ivan Lucas]

I'm using Kubuntu 6.06 LTS and an ATI Radeon 9550 graphics card in dual head mode using the 'ati' xorg driver. My mouse cursor doesn't work properly on the right hand screen, I can click things ok, but the cursor itself 'sticks'. Nothing I do on screen 2 will change the cursor, but if move it over to screen 1 it will change to a hand over hyperlinks and a resize icon over window borders etc as you'd expect. If I move the mouse from the left (1) to the right (2) screen going over a window border in the process the cursor ends up on screen 2 'stuck' as a resize cursor, even the click position seems to be in the middle as it is with the resize. Nothing I do on screen 2 will change it back to a pointer, but if I move the cursor back to screen 1 it immediately reverts back to normal behaviour on that screen. Sorry I can't think how describe it much better than that, but I'm willing to answer questions.

[Ivan Lucas (ivan-lucas)]

I've switched to using the fglrx driver and the problem has gone away so I'm assuming it's something to do with the 'ati' xorg driver.

[Todd Ross (brainsick)]

I'm experiencing this problem as well. ATI Radeon X800 GTO, using the xorg ati driver.

[Jeremy Teale (jteale)]

Filing under Xorg driver for now. Is this still reproducible by either of you? Also, is it a square garbled cursor, or just the resize cursor? Thanks.

[Todd Ross (brainsick)]

Jeremy,

Thanks for taking an interest in this bug, but I'm no longer available to help test as I'm no longer running 6.06 LTS. This was just one of MANY bugs that I encountered in that release. When it looked like no one was addressing issues, I went back to 5.10 and am now running 6.10, neither of which have the cursor issue.

6.06 LTS is truly the worst release of Ubuntu yet. It's a shame that 6.06 continues to be the only option available via ShipIt.

For what it's worth, the cursor wasn't garbled (distorted/noisy) in either case. It was just stuck. If it was an arrow when you moved it to the second screen, then it stayed an arrow no matter what you did.

Todd

[davee (davee-sungate)]

I've just hit this bug following an upgrade from Dapper to Edgy. I'm seeing exactly the symptoms that Ivan describes in the initial description. I'm using a dual-head fglrx setup. I'm happy to test/try things to chase this one... The problem is not specific to the ati driver, I think.

[Chris Oattes (cjo20)]

I am experiencing the same problem on Feisty. I am running the fglrx drivers. I am able to provide more information if required.

[Benjamin Carlyle (ben-carlyle)]

I believe I have a work-around for this bug. My colleagues and I have been experiencing this problem with our Dell optiplex 745s and ATI cards. The cursor would not change when the mouse was on the right-hand screen, though its position would change relative to its hotspot. If it was a pointer on the left screen it would stay a pointer on the right screen. If it was a grabby hand on the left it would stay that way on the right. Returning the cursor to the left-hand screen would cause the cursor to change to the correct icon.

My lspci shows:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV516 [Radeon X1300/X1550 Series]
01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV516 [Radeon X1300 Pro] (Secondary)

We are using the restricted ATI driver.

A fellow developer had this to say on our internal wiki:
"I got mine going with sudo aticonfig --initial=dual-head and doing a few edits in the resulting xorg.conf, like turning off Xinerama."

I will attach the xorg.conf that fixes the problem for me.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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