Corrupt mouse cursor....

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#1

So I have just installed my Suse 13.1 system into an HPz400 and put in an ATi FirePro v3800 card driving 2 x 23" HP LED screens. Ati driver is all installed fine - I’m getting the correct resolutions, extended desktop across screens and all 3d stuiff and Compiz seem to work fine.
The issue I have is that randomly the mouse cursor will change from its normal pointer shape to a vertical line of dots. This usually seems to happen when traversing the cursor from one screen to t’other, but not always. After a brief period this vertical line of dots then changes nearly back to the correct pointer shape but with what looks like a ghosted image. Strangely this corruption only happens on my l\h primary display - if I move the cursor to the r/h screen it is then perfectly displayed!! Similarly the text cursor I see while writing this looks more like a dotted C that the straight vertical I line it should be. Only way to cure it it to reboot the sytem. I have tried using different theme cursors but all of them seem affected the same way. Changing the cursor size up to 48 does repair the shape but I really cant do with working with a cursor that big!!
I have searched this online and found quite a few historic posts describing exactly the same problem I have which seem to have been around since Suse10. I have found mention of a kernel patch but when I try to install that it says I already have it installed. I have also read that using SW cursor instead of HW cursor in xorg.conf can help - but I was under the impression xorg.conf was no longer used,… so I’m a bit stumped on how to fix this one.

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

Thanks
Chris

#2

Well, you can still manually create/edit the Xorg config files if required. Try ediiting /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf with

Option           "SWCursor"        "true"

Are you using the radeon driver or the proprietary fglrx driver? If the former, try using the latter perhaps.

#3

Is Compiz still being used?? I know that all the eye candy is not done using Compiz. If you forced a loading that may be where the problem is.

#4

I am watching this thread as I have recently experienced the same mouse pointer anomaly from time to time.

My system (13.1, KDE 4.14.2) has Radeon HD 6550 graphics engine (an A8 APU) and I am running the proprietary driver,
version 14.301.1001-1-x86_64 from this repo. I don’t have Compiz loaded.

The issue comes and goes; when I can’t wait for it to disappear, I logout/login, thus restarting X.

I cannot pinpoint what made this appear, but my gut says it started after upgrading to this most recent version of fglrx.
I had been running a much older version, but recently upgraded my display devices, was having issues getting them set up and in the process upgraded my driver.

Your only useful takeaways from this post are

  1. You are not alone
  2. if you ARE using the radeon driver, fglrx probably won’t be a solution…

FYI, fglrx uses /etc/X11/xorg.conf for setup.
Most of the directories under /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d on my system date back to 2011(openSuse 11.x ?, 12.x for sure)
I used the open source radeon driver for a while in the past.

I am beginning to realize that it is probably time to do a true “clean install” when I move to 13.2.
I have used “zypper dup” in the recent past, super easy and mostly successful with a bit of patchwork.
But I am seeing more and more legacy “stuff” lying around; probably good to get a cleaner refresh.