Mouse/cursor problems

[Doug11]

Hi, guys. After some distro hopping, I think I finally might be settling itno fedora. I have an Acer Aspire 4736z and my problem is the cursor does a lot of blinking and disappearing when in motion. is this a graphics problem or a setting that I can adjust to get it to stop. Thanks.

[hm_shurt]

I am also having a mouse cursor issue with Fedora 17. All was ok with Fedora 16 and I decided to upgrade to 17 using the preupgrade program. Fedora 17 works fine for the most part, but the mouse cursor disappears when it isn't moving. Is this a bug or a feature? If it is a feature, I hope there is a way of reverting to always-visible behaviour, because I find it quite annoying, although not quite a show-stopper.

I am using a Toshiba netbook, with Intel N10 graphics.

Doug, I like Fedora generally, but it is a bleeding edge distro, so there will be occasional hiccups. ;-) But then you do get to try the latest stuff before most of the other distros put it in.

[ironcladlou]

Same problem here. Upgraded from F16 to F17 (XFCE spin) using PreUpgrade on a Thinkpad T520. Very easy to consistently reproduce using any open window, or even just an XFCE panel.

Using just the XFCE pane:

1. Click the XFCE applications menu button on the panel (cursor disappears)
2. Move mouse away from the application menu that pops up during #1 (cursor reappears)
3. Click empty space on the desktop (cursor disappears)
4. Repeat

Using an open window:

1. Click empty space on the desktop until your cursor is visible
2. Click any open window to bring it into focus (cursor disappears)
3. Move the cursor over the desktop without clicking (cursor reappears)
4. Click empty space on the desktop (cursor disappears)
5. Repeat from step 2

It also seems to happen pretty easily if you just use the mouse scroll wheel to scroll the contents of any open window with a scrollbar enabled. Keep the mouse still, use the scroll wheel in any direction, cursor disappears.

I've also noticed the cursor tends to disappears during the transition between icon states. For instance, from the normal cursor to the text selection cursor when hovering over a text field. If you move the cursor very slowly, it'll disappear right at the transition threshold.

Very annoying to say the least. It's so annoying I am considering a fresh reinstall and considering the upgrade botched.

EDIT: I've found another thread which seems related: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=1584509

[ironcladlou]

I noticed something today which seems common to the other poster's problem and related. After the F17 upgrade, xrandr throws an error and doesn't detect my displays properly (but my displays still work). There is also an intel module error in the xorg logs.

[dmace@thinkpad ~]$ grep EE /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep intel
[    23.788] (EE) Failed to load module "intel" (module requirement mismatch, 0)

[dmace@thinkpad ~]$ xrandr -q
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 1920 x 1080, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 1920 x 1080
default connected 1920x1080+0+0 0mm x 0mm
   1920x1080       0.0*

Surely this is related. Is there some way to fix the intel driver loading (which I thought was part of the kernel)?

[Doug11]

My graphics is the intel gma4500m. My display will only work if I modify grub by adding "i915.modeset=0". Even using the live cd requires this. I have not found anything to fix this yet.

[kartoshka]

Oh its good that I'm not the only one This problem drives me crazy.I think that problem is with video drivers.

[lightsleeper]

I have the same problems on a thinkpad t400. It is very annoying, indeed!

[Doug11]

I've had this problem on a lot of the newer releases, mint, ubuntu, fedora.....The only success I have had is with Debian. It worked great. But I like Fedora so it would be nice to resolve the issue.

[hm_shurt]

The latest update of xorg seems to have fixed the problem.

[ironcladlou]

Originally Posted by hm_shurt

The latest update of xorg seems to have fixed the problem.

I got the email notification for your reply, updated through yum, rebooted, and now the problem is fixed. Awesome! I was about 5 minutes away from reinstalling from scratch (had my USB stick in the drive and was ready to reboot), and your status update came along and saved me an evening.

Case closed for me!

[lightsleeper]

The same here. My problem was fixed also. I ran:

package-cleanup --orphans

and

yum repolist

and

yum distro-sync

Just like explained in the preupgrade manual http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PreUpgrade

Now things are good again and fedora is running great!

[Doug11]

Did any of you guys have to use the grub edit by adding the "i915.modeset=0" to the grub menu?

---------- Post added at 07:37 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:03 AM ----------

That did not work for me. It must have something to do with the Intel graphics.

Originally Posted by lightsleeper

The same here. My problem was fixed also. I ran:

package-cleanup --orphans

and

yum repolist

and

yum distro-sync

Just like explained in the preupgrade manual http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PreUpgrade

Now things are good again and fedora is running great!

[lightsleeper]

Yes, indeed, it probably had something to do with the intel graphics. If I remember correctly yum did some change in version of my intel graphics driver.

Currently I have

rpm -qa|grep intel
xorg-x11-drv-intel-2.19.0-1.fc17.x86_64

That one seems to work.

[rweiler1023]

I've got a Toshiba satelite A305? with an intel 915 and I still have the jerky mouse issues with xorg-x11-drv-intel-2.20.1-1.fc17.x86_64. It's working ok right at the moment, but every so often it becomes unresponsive and or locks on to things like the firefox scroll bar even though I haven't clicked.

[hm_shurt]

I have a similar problem with a machine at work, and I clear it by switching to command display (Ctl-Alt-F2) and then back to the X-server screen (Ctl-Alt-F1) or (Ctl-Alt-F7). But it happens rarely enough that I didn't raise the issue.