mouse cursor disappears

[Dan Lenski]

Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-driver-nv

I upgraded from Dapper to Edgy beta a few weeks ago, and decided to switch from the closed-source nvidia X driver to the open-source nv driver. Everything has been fine EXCEPT:

When I log out of GNOME, or press CTRL-ALT-DEL to kill the X-server, or otherwise kill gdm or my X session, the mouse cursor disappears and I can't make it come back other than by rebooting.

I've tried several workarounds to get the mouse cursor to reappear:
* restarting gdm (/etc/init.d/gdm restart)
* changing the Gnome mouse cursor theme (has no effect, mouse cursor does not reappear)
* restarting X with the "nvidia" driver rather than the "nv" driver; I was *very* surprised, but this did not fix the problem!!!

The only way to get the cursor to reappear is by rebooting, as far as I can tell. My video card is an NVidia GeForce 6100 (integrated into motherboards for AMD K8 processors).

[Devnull-freedesktop (devnull-freedesktop)]

i've experienced the same thing on an eMac 700Mhz with an nVidia GeForce2 MX as
well, but only on the built-in monitor (CrtcNumber 1). when i use the external
monitor (CrtcNumber 0), the mouse cursor displays just fine whether i use
HWCursor "on" or "off".

(see also bug 3714)

[Orion-cora (orion-cora)]

I'm seeing the same on a Athlon X2 system with FC5T3:

00:05.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge
(rev a2)

xorg-x11-drv-nv-1.0.1.5-3.1

[Jpmahowald (jpmahowald)]

Same here, on integrated nVidia in an Acer Athlon box running FC5T3.

00:05.0 0300: 10de:0242 (rev a2)

[Dimitris-kalamaras-compupress (dimitris-kalamaras-compupress)]

Same here with Gigabyte GA-K8N51GMf-9 with IGP GeForce 6100 on FC5

[Dficenec (dficenec)]

Same invisible cursor problem:
 - FC5 Release
 - ASUS K8N-VM nVidia GeForce 6100 Motherboard
 - nVidia C51 PCI Express Bridge rev 162
 - AMD Athlog 64 3000+ Venice Core 800 MHZ HT 754 E6
 - Gateway 15" (driver 800 x 600 generic CRT display)

Fixed by disabling HWCursor

[Mharris-mharris (mharris-mharris)]

This problem has been reported in Red Hat bugzilla by numerous people over
the last 4 months or so, and is present on x86, x86_64, and ppc builds, so
it is presumed to be a general problem not constrained to any particular
architecture.

In all cases reported so far, using Option "swcursor" or one of its many
synonyms, works around the issue.

Recently, a user has reported that disabling rhgb (Red Hat graphical boot),
allows the X server to start up and the hardware cursor works fine. Another
user worked around the problem by booting into runlevel 3, and then logging
in as root and typing "init 5". After that, the nv driver worked fine
and did not have hardware cursor problems.

Anyone experiencing this problem on any distribution, should attempt one
of these workarounds as well to see if it works.

Both of these workarounds essentially causes rhgb to be bypassed, so rhgb
appears to be the catalyst which makes this bug appear. For those who
are not familiar with rhgb, it is essentially a graphical shell around
boot time init startup, which is essentially eye-candy init. rhgb starts
up an X server with DRI disabled as soon as possible in the init sequence,
so that the remainder of the init can proceed graphically inside X. The
X server that is started, is started in a minimal environment where the
hard disk is read-only, etc.

Once the system has started up, rhgb starts a second X server, which is
the real X server the user will be using, and then kills the minimal X
server it was running with.

As such, there is a small window of time, in which 2 X servers can actually
be running at the same time on different VCs, and this may bring video
driver bugs or X server bugs to the surface which would not ever happen
if only a single X server were running.

It would appear that the "nv" video driver in this case, does not start up
correctly if another X server has been started already, however it is not
clear what exactly the problem is yet.

- This particular bug is reported by a Yellowdog user, indicating that it is
  a clone of Fedora Core 2. Does Yellowdog also use rhgb, and if so, if you
  disable rhgb, does the problem go away?

- Are any other users out there of other distributions able to reproduce this
  problem?

- Using another OS, or having removed rhgb in a Red Hat system, can any user
  using "nv" reproduce this problem manually, by starting an X server, then
  switching VTs and starting a second X server on :1?

Hopefully this information will be useful in tracking down the cause of the
problem in the nv driver. In the mean time, until a solution is found and
committed to CVS, users experiencing the problem are recommended to only use
a single X server at a time, and to disable rhgb or any similar software
until a solution can be found - or alternatively to continue using swcursor
to avoid the issue.

Hope this helps.

[Mharris-mharris (mharris-mharris)]

Adding Nvidia to CC.

There have been more updates on the Red Hat bugzilla tracking the same issue:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=182517

It appears that the problem occurs after a VT switch, the mouse cursor
disappears. This happens when Red Hat graphical boot is active, because
it starts one X server to do its thing, then starts a second one for
the user when it's done and switches to the other server. This is done
in order to avoid excessive screen flicker when switching from one X
server to another.

Of course that causes a VT switch to occur, which uncovers this driver
bug. Users who are not using rhgb, and have uninstalled it, sometimes
experience this issue as well, when doing VT switches normally, however
it does not happen for all users, so it may be restricted to a subset
of hardware.

While it's mostly reported by rhgb users, as it affects a lot of them,
lots of people are hitting this problem on VTswitch nonetheless wether
they're using rhgb or not.

Hope this helps diagnose/resolve the issue.

Thanks guys..
TTYL

[Darford (darford)]

Having same problem, Red Hat 5, Nvidia GeForce 6150LE.

Would anyone be willing to post an example file for the xorg.conf SWCursor edit?
 I'm still a little unsure which section it goes it. How serious are the
consequences if I guess wrong and restart the X server? How likely is X to fail
to start altogether if there's a typo in xorg.conf?

Tried editing rhgb out of my grub file. I get a cursor on the first log in, but
it disappears when I log out. I don't see any obvious cursor commands in the
post session file. I had thought that it wasn't supposed to restart rhbg on
logout, but haven't gone through the process table to check this yet.

[Tibbs (tibbs)]

It goes in the Device section:

Section "Device"
        Identifier "Videocard0"
        Driver "nvidia"
        VendorName "Videocard vendor"
        BoardName "nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge"
        Option "HWCursor" "off"
EndSection

Yes, binary nvidia drivers on this machine, but the same thing works on a
machine running the free nv driver.

[Darford (darford)]

HWCursor off fix works for me. Thank you for the example.

[Dan Lenski (lenski)]

Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-driver-nv

I upgraded from Dapper to Edgy beta a few weeks ago, and decided to switch from the closed-source nvidia X driver to the open-source nv driver. Everything has been fine EXCEPT:

When I log out of GNOME, or press CTRL-ALT-DEL to kill the X-server, or otherwise kill gdm or my X session, the mouse cursor disappears and I can't make it come back other than by rebooting.

I've tried several workarounds to get the mouse cursor to reappear:
* restarting gdm (/etc/init.d/gdm restart)
* changing the Gnome mouse cursor theme (has no effect, mouse cursor does not reappear)
* restarting X with the "nvidia" driver rather than the "nv" driver; I was *very* surprised, but this did not fix the problem!!!

The only way to get the cursor to reappear is by rebooting, as far as I can tell. My video card is an NVidia GeForce 6100 (integrated into motherboards for AMD K8 processors).

[Lenbok (lenbok)]

Disabling rhgb works for me, on FC6, with a GeForce 6150, I am using hwcursor now.

BTW - before coming across this bug and the no-rhgb workaround, I had come up
with the swcursor workaround myself. However, swcursor seems to leave screen
corruption (a wake of blocky painting around the mouse pointer) when certain
types of operation were occurring. When I was still on FC5, I only noticed this
when doing video editing, but when I upgraded to FC6 and turned on the compiz
desktop effects, this screen corruption impinged more onto regular use (e.g.
when mousing over menus, dragging title bars etc). Thus:

1) With increased compiz-type use, fixing this bug (3009) becomes more important.

2) Should a separate bug be filed for the corruption problem with swcursor? (I
am using the nvidia drivers, and do not know if the swcursor problem occurs with nv)

[Didier (mac-mithouard)]

I have the same problem on my Edgy installation.
Each time I switch user going through the logon panel, the mouse cursor is no longer visible although the mouse operates perfectly (one can spot it in sensitive areas, buttons ..).

When I switch user with the CTRL ALT INSERT key combination, it works randomly : sometimes the mouse cursor disappears and sometimes not !
My configuration is sempron 2800 and my video card is also an NVidia Geforce 6100. I use the nv driver with the "6 series" selected.

Thanks for your help.
HW Configuration 3d68c0c556245089cf97aa4976fc5f34

[Daniel Stone (daniels)]

Sorry about the phenomenal bug spam, guys. Adding xorg-team@ to the QA contact so bugs don't get lost in future.

[ghu (antonio-ghu)]

Hi!
I had the same problem on Debian Etch running on a Sempron system with nGeoForce 6100.
The problem occurred after the installation of all libraries needed for running vmware server on a 64-bit environments. Until that moment I had no problem at all.
In detail I tried to install the following packages (some of them was already in my system, but I do not remember which. In any case I worked on a fresh install):

libx11-6 libx11-dev libxtst6 xinetd wget binutils-doc make manpages-dev autoconf automake1.9 libtool flex bison gdbgcc-2.95-doc

After the installation I had to reboot. Then, I installed
ia32-libs, vmware with a patch.

After a new reboot, the mouse pointer was not visible.

Disabling HWCursor fixed the problem.

[Mlt (mlt)]

I have the same problem on my Acer L100 which has the same integrated graphics card.

The cursor disappears when you log out of a user name and back to gdm. Also the whole log in gdm screen moves with the cursor so the log in box will move around the screen.

I am using the nv driver at the moment -the nvidia glx driver won ´t load.

[Mlt (mlt)]

I´ve just checked and it affects kdm and gdm if that´s any help (or not).

[José L. Domingo López (ubuntu-24x7linux)]

I can confirm this problem from a clean install of Kubuntu Feisty Beta, updated to 20070325. Everything is like the first post says. This is a x86_64 install on a Gigabyte mobo with an on-board nVIDIA 6100 GPU, part of the nForce 430 chipset. I have yet to check if this same problem happens running the propietary nVIDIA drivers, but as they have another set of currently severe and unfixed issues I have been unable to carry those tests.

As the one eway to fix the cursor problem seems to reboot the box, it seems like a problem with the driver setting some register on the board on boot, and unsetting it under some circumstances and never resetting it back to normal. Maybe an issue with the hardware cursor? Maybe forcing the software cursor could workaround this problem in the meanwhile.

Hope it helps.

[PrivateUser132781 (privateuser132781-deactivatedaccount)]

I also experience this problem on Feisty Beta on an AMD Sempron machine with an Nvidia Geforce 6100 integrated video card. I never experienced this problem on edgy, with either the nv or nvidia-glx driver. I also didn't have a problem on fiesty untill nvidia-glx broke and I was forced to switch back to nv. Its occurrence is unpredictable, but seems to occur most often after screen saver, on user switch or on first start of gdm. Like for the original reporter, only restart of machine solves problem - neither logout nor gdm restart helps.

Two questions:

(1) How do we know this is nv-driver related?

(2) Does anyone know why this bug's importance is set to "medium"? Surely this is a critical problem for the large number of people who use the opensource nvidia driver (assuming that is the source of the problem)?

[Karin Huegele (ubuntu-lorecrafters)]

I am experiencing the same problem using Nvidia GeForce 6150 LE with nvidia-glx driver on Feisty 7.04 installation. Processor is AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5000+. The error occurs with gdm and kdm. Rebooting solves the problem. But I wished I didn't have to keep rebooting my machine.

I really hope a more viable solution is found sometime soon. Thank you.

[Pointlander (andy-pointlander)]

Take a look at:
http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-linux&m=116983714009897&w=2

In short add:
Option "HWCursor" "off"
to the nvidia Device Section. The above line will force x.org to use the software cursor.

[Andre Scandaroli (ascandaroli)]

Just adding my piece of contribution.

I have experienced the same problem in different distros: SUSE 10.2 i386 and an LFS 6.2 based with Xorg 7.1 installed.

In both systems disabling HWCursor has worked.

[ghu (antonio-ghu)]

Just to correct myself,
on Debian etch 64-bit running on a Sempron system with nGeoForce 6100 disabling HWCursor has only partially solved the problem: when I logout the pointer vanishes in gdm and it is not visible anymore.

[Pekka Pessi (pessi)]

I'm experiencing similar problem (hw cursor disappears until reboot) with a clean install of Feisty 7.04 i386 using NVidia C51PV (GeForce 6150). Hardware mouse cursor disappears after changing to an another virtual terminal (Alt-Ctrl-F1 then back to X with Alt-F7).

However, nvidia-glx-new_1.0.9755+2.6.20.5-16.28 seems to be working fine.

[PrivateUser132781 (privateuser132781-deactivatedaccount)]

The bug seems to have been reported in X.org's bugzilla several times, but no indication of progress (status "new" in three bugs).
<a href="https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3009">3009</a>, <a href= "https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7309">7309</a> and <a href="https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10163">10163</a>.
But status resolved in bug <a href="https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=677">#677</a>, however, I can't sow how it's been resolved.

[PrivateUser132781 (privateuser132781-deactivatedaccount)]

and another one:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9341

[Steveruss (steveruss)]

Complete Linux noob. New box Dell E521. nv 6150LE. First install, first problem. Fixed with HWCursor [off].

Excuse me if this sounds completely ridicules. I did a stint at Apple as a QA manager and sometimes a noob will get lucky because they "don't know any better".

While trying to work around this I found...

In Gnome 2.0 docs >configuring the mouse it says the default pointer is a "the default black pointer"...yet in System/preferences/hardware/mouse/pointers... the default pointer APPEARS to be no pointer.

Could the code be selecting this default "no pointer" and causing this problem?

[Chris Bagwell (chris-cnpbagwell)]

I'm seeing similar isues on an hp tx1000z laptop. It has a nVidia C51 (Geforce 6150 Go).

I installed F7 and the laptop would load the rhgb fine.. When it switched to normal X server it would often hang up. I found the following two things fixed that solution. Add either "noapic" or "vga=0x317" to boot options.

If I use "noapic" then I eventually had an invisible cursor. This happened after upgrading my sound drivers (nVidia chipset again using snd-hda-intel drivers) to ALSA snapshot drivers. After rebooting the cursor was invisible.

I didn't try disabling HWCursor but I'm assuming that would have fixed it as ewll.

For some unknown reason, when I switched from "noapic" to "vga=0x317" then the cursor became visible again.

[Bauldrick (gouldyis)]

How can this be of medium importance? I get exactly this same behaviour. I have more than one user on more than 1 PC displaying these exact symptoms. It is very time consuming and annoying having to reboot just to log in as someone else. Xserver-nv driver

[Topher (hunt-topher)]

I believe my issue is related to this one: I always use Gnome's Typing Break feature and several times a day (but not every time), when the typing break ends, my mouse cursor has disappeared and I cannot interact except unreliably with some keys: sometimes ALT+TAB works to switch apps, sometimes just the arrowkeys to scroll the current window, sometimes not even that.

I have not yet noticed any consistent patterns about this problem. Should I post this as an individual ticket or keep it part of this one?

My device database ID, for hardware specs: b9a2a29a4c1466b34df0c12e1feebe29
Inspiron 1100 Dell laptop with Intel 845G graphics card, 2GHz proc, 512MB RAM, Ubuntu Feisty latest update.

[Borahshadow (codyregister)]

I too have this problem with Gutsy Tribe 5 and the Nv driver I have an Nvidia 6100 Graphics card I have never noticed this before because I have used the nvidia driver but I noticed the the nv driver almost looks crisper IMO but I think I will change the the proprietary if it will fix it
I also have it disappear after using adept or synaptic but I have not tried to reproduce that yet but I have reproduced the logout part

[Topher (hunt-topher)]

I have Feisty Ubuntu (GNOME not KDE) on an Inspiron 1100 with Intel 845G
graphics chipset and just to let you know, the suggested mod to
xorg.confdidn't fix the problem. This only happens after the "Typing
Break" widget
break ends and normal screen is restored, but inconsistently and
unpredictably - although more frequently now. Any suggestions?

On 9/8/07, Codester <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> I too have this problem with Gutsy Tribe 5 and the Nv driver I have an
> Nvidia 6100 Graphics card I have never noticed this before because I have
> used the nvidia driver but I noticed the the nv driver almost looks crisper
> IMO but I think I will change the the proprietary if it will fix it
> I also have it disappear after using adept or synaptic but I have not
> tried to reproduce that yet but I have reproduced the logout part
>
> --
> mouse cursor disappears
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/63905
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Milan-kerslager-pslib (milan-kerslager-pslib)]

HWCursof still does not work in F8:
xorg-x11-drv-nv-2.1.5-2.fc8
xorg-x11-drivers-7.2-9.fc8
xorg-x11-apps-7.3-1.fc8

[Milan-kerslager-pslib (milan-kerslager-pslib)]

*** Bug 12314 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

*** Bug 9341 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

We could patch the driver/server to always use software cursor. There are a lot of duplicates upstream..

[Orion-cora (orion-cora)]

Still present with xorg-x11-drv-nv-2.1.6-7.fc9.i386

[Dmitriusan (dmitriusan)]

I have noticed thid bug too while using Ubuntu 7.04/7.10, Kubuntu 7.04/7.10.
Config: Athlon 3800 s939, Foxconn motherboad with nForce 430 and integrated GeForce 6150 (32 mb for frame buffer), 1 Gb Ram. Symptoms are the same: disappering of cursor sometimes after relogin. May be, using software cursor is not the best solution?

[marvstod (marvin-stodolsky)]

I don't have relevant expertise to guide you,
but this problem only appears on certain Systems.
My Lenovo PC box has the problem, while an Averetec laptop does not.

MarvS

On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 2:08 PM, Dmitrius <email address hidden> wrote:
> I have noticed thid bug too while using Ubuntu 7.04/7.10, Kubuntu 7.04/7.10.
> Config: Athlon 3800 s939, Foxconn motherboad with nForce 430 and integrated GeForce 6150 (32 mb for frame buffer), 1 Gb Ram. Symptoms are the same: disappering of cursor sometimes after relogin. May be, using software cursor is not the best solution?
>
> --
> mouse cursor disappears
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/63905
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of a duplicate bug.
>

[Γριφεγ (grfgguvf)]

I have an nVidia GeForce 2 MX 200 and NEVER experienced this problem. I used various Fedora versions and other Linuxes, Solaris, various BSDs, Xorg and XFree86, free nv and binary nvidia driver, rhgb or no rhgb: hardware cursor always worked, even after numerous vt switches or with multiple X servers running in parallel.

[Felipe "Juca" Sanches (felipe-sanches)]

in my case, the problem happens only when the screensaver starts with the laptop closed. If I leave my laptop screen opened, then cusor wont disappear after screensaver.

[Felipe "Juca" Sanches (felipe-sanches)]

as a workaround (still using the hardware cursor) I have configured gnome-power-manager to do nothing when I close my laptop lid.

[Russ W. Knize (rknize)]

As another simple workaround for this issue, which occasionally pops up for me too, is to switch to a text virtual console and then switch back to X: Ctrl+Alt+F1 then Ctrl+Alt+F7 (or F8 or wherever X is).

[Orion-cora (orion-cora)]

Appeared for me with:

xorg-x11-drv-nv-2.1.12-6.fc10.i386
nVidia Corporation C51 [GeForce 6150 LE] (rev a2)

after I started a second X server to run system-config-display on another VT. After that server exited, the cursor on the other X server disappeared. I ended up disabling HWcursor to get it to come back.

[Francesco Marella (francesco-marella)]

same here, it's like mouse cursor is locked in GDM screen, if I press Ctrl+Alt+F8 I can see GDM login screen and mouse cursor.

[Ask Bjørn Hansen (askbjoernhansen)]

Also happening with xorg-x11-drv-nv-2.1.13-1.fc11.x86_64

[wouter bolsterlee (wbolster)]

I'm seeing the same with the intel driver on a Debian testing system, so the cause of the issue might be outside the nv driver (since I'm not using it.)

Fwiw, I mostly hit this problem when I connect an external display device to my laptop and switch resolutions using the standard Gnome tools for that (those use XRandR). Usually it suddently comes back after some switching back and forth from internal to external monitor, and from console to X. Very undeterministic, though.

[i30817 (i30817)]

Same problem with as #22 but i have a radeon x700 m so it can't be just the driver.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Thank you for reporting this issue about xserver-xorg-video-nv. Starting
with Lucid, Ubuntu is transitioning to using the -nouveau video driver
by default instead of -nv. The reason for this change is because
upstream development for the -nv driver has been quite slow. We are
quite pleased with the upstream development speed for -nouveau, and hope
this will translate into swifter bug fixes as well.

Because of this, I'm closing this bug report at this time. I'm marking
it wontfix because what you describe is probably a valid issue, but we
do not have further plans to work on it in Ubuntu. If you would still like
to see this issue investigated, I would encourage you to file it
upstream at http://bugs.freedesktop.org/.

[i30817 (i30817)]

Disapeared with last update for me.

[Aaron Bouzek (nakarti)]

I have at least a reliable way to reproduce:

I experience this bug with my previous setup of Integrated GF6150 (only difference is component out) intermittently through several generations of Ubuntu
I got a discrete GF8400, and the bug went away with it.
I removed the GF8400 and the bug immediately returned, with no other changes to the system.

Trying a reinstall of Ubuntu(Also have other reasons), I am on 10.04 Lucid with the updates current as of August 4th, 2010

[socrateos (socrateos)]

The mouse cursor disappears randomly but for me usually while typing something into a text box or search box or even login box.
In fact, it just disappeared while I was writing this here.
My temp solution is to have 2nd mouse which will work after the first mouse disappears.
That's why I was able to finish this message. But it too soon will disappear.

The problem started happening after upgrading from 9.04 to 10.04 (and now 10.10)
I am using ASUS M3N78-EM motherboard built-in graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8300.

This bug differ from bug#492782 where they report it happens "after restarting screen".

[=0yP)F]|L(0YNrv (ccgjsz8xdbdyyvy-deactivatedaccount)]

It disappears for me when I leave it alone for a few seconds. Not sure if this is supposed to happen.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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