OpenSuse 11.4 loses cursor while mouse control remains

English Hardware
#1

I loaded 11.4 several months ago and have a problem that occurs every several days. The mouse cursor simply disappears and will not come back. I can move the mouse and tabs will highlight where the now invisible cursor is moving and I can click on those locations and controls if I can hit them with the invisible cursor. I have tried the keystroke sequences that were recommended for earlier versions of OpenSuse, but they don’t bring the cursor back. The only solution is to alt-tab to a command window, su to root and do a “shutdown now”. Even then, that’s only partially successful. KDE is killed and the drive light flashes for a bit, but then everything hangs to the point that only a hard shutdown (i.e., pushing the power switch) will shut the computer down.

Computer information:
hp Compaq D530CMT

CPU Information
Processor (CPU): Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
Speed: 2,992.68 MHz
Cores: 2
Memory Information
Total memory (RAM): 2.9 GiB
Free memory: 107.3 MiB (+ 1.7 GiB Caches)
Free swap: 2.0 GiB

Display:
Vendor: nVidia Corporation
Model: G98 [GeForce 8400 GS]
2D driver: nouveau
3D driver: nouveau Gallium (7.10.2)

There seems to be little correlation to computer activities that induce the cursor loss. It may be occurring somewhat more frequently when doing graphics-intensive things (Gwenview, SMplayer, etc.) but it also occurs if I’m just web browsing or doing other less graphics-intense tasks as well.

Any help on this would be appreciated. This is becoming quite frustrating.

#2

Have you tried using the nvidia driver rather than nouveau

#3

Yes. I’ve had the same issue with the Nvidia driver as well as horrifically slow video response with the Nvidia driver. The nouveau driver at least provides reasonable video response.

#4

I have had that problem. See: *(http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/applications/458983-i-tried-xfce-now-i-am-back-kde.html)

I have only had that happen with XFCE, not with either KDE or Gnome.

I have seen on on two systems, one using the nouveau driver, and one with an older Intel graphics card.

The problem does seem to be driver related. If it were desktop related, then killing and restarting Xorg would fix it. In my experience, that doesn’t work. For me, it seemed to be triggered by the power and/or screen saver actions in XFCE, but I cannot be certain of that.*

#5

The problem you described is the one I’m having. But I’m using KDE. As you describe, the only solution when this occurs is a hard re-start. This does not seem to be related to the system going into screen lock or other power-saving modes. This problem occurs in the middle of working sessions while I’m doing various tasks.

#6

On 10/10/2011 07:36 AM, mklange wrote:
> The mouse cursor simply disappears and will not come
> back.

this may not be helpful at all…but, i have a suspicion about the many
different ways Flash affects my machine…sometimes the mouse cursor is
invisible over certain sections of the screen when it is in use…

next time it happens to you TRY this:

  • as you wrote “alt-tab to a command window”

  • don’t become root, instead type in top and hit enter

  • initially (or eventually) you should see the ‘container’ in which the
    Flash plugin runs, in Firefox it is ‘plugin-containe’ and will probably
    be at the top of of the application list in top [in Opera, it will be
    ‘operapluginwrap’]

-in the first column will be the process identification number of the
container [PID]

-press ‘k’ and a new top section will appear just above top’s separating
bar, saying “PID to kill:”

-type in the PID of the Flash container

-press Enter

-press ‘y’

-press Enter

-the running Flash container should be marked defunct or just disappear

-back on the desktop [Ctrl+Alt+F7]: is your mouse cursor visible again?

-if not, use the same technique to kill Firefox (or Opera, or what other
USER (not root) owned PID is at the top of the list, checking each time
to see if the cursor has returned…

if killing flash works then you might wanna install a newer (or older)
version of Flash and see if that helps…

i guess if killing the Flash container doesn’t work then Xorg will be at
the top of the list…and, you might try turning off desktop effects
and see if that returns your cursor…if it does you almost certainly
have a video driver problem…so until that gets fixed, decide which you
want the most: a visible cursor or desktop effects…

–
DD
Caveat
openSUSE®, the “German Automobiles” of operating systems

#7

Thanks,

I’ll try that next time the problem appears.

#8

I’ve had a similar problem.
I ‘work around’ it by going to another terminal and killing Xorg.
This kills the session and another starts.
You lose your open programs, but don’t have to reboot.

Alt+Ctrl+F1 (switch to terminal 1)
logon in as root
killall Xorg

Then log back in.

#9

On 10/12/2011 12:56 AM, beneford wrote:
> Alt+Ctrl+F1 (switch to terminal 1)
> logon in as root
> killall Xorg
>
> Then log back in.

it is your machine, do as you wish…but i would suggest a more ‘humane’
(and controlled/orderly/normal) shutdown of both the DE and X is easily
accomplished by this slightly altered path

-Alt+Ctrl+F1 (switch to terminal 1)
-logon in as root and give

init 3

-when the orderly shutdown is complete give

init 5

-Alt+Ctrl+F7 (switch to GUI)
-Then log back in.

if you subsequently (after logging into the DE) go back to Alt+Ctrl+F1
and log out, then the system won’t complain during the next shutdown
sequence (that is, it won’t stop at a screen and ask you if it is ok to
log out of terminal one)

–
DD
Caveat
openSUSE®, the “German Automobiles” of operating systems

#10

That might actually be a different problem.

The various problems that I have seen are:
1: Complete freeze. Nothing is happening on the computer. It does not even respond to pings from the network. Here, the only choice seems to be a forced power-off and reboot. In my case, I switched to “nomodeset” on the computer with that problem. Testing 12.1 Beta1, the problem if now quite rare so I probably won’t go to “nomodeset”.

2: The problem as described in the opening post of this thread. The mouse cursor vanishes, but if you can guess where it is, then there is still response to the mouse. In this case, restarting Xorg did not help. I had to reboot the computer to fix the problem. I was able to reboot by groping my way to the “logout” icon. Using that only half-way logged out, but CTRL-ALT-DEL completed the task. Note that ALT CTRL F1 did not work in that situation.

3: A desktop lockup. The desktop stops responding to mouse clicks, though if you have an open xterm session, that will continue to work. I usually found that I had to remote login from another computer (ssh over the network), and kill the Xorg process to get it working again.

4: The Desktop fails to respond properly. It responds to some actions, but not to other. If I can get the logout to respond, then a logout and login works. However, usually logout is non-responsive. However, CTRL-ALT-Backspace (twice) kill and restarts Xorg, and the new session is fine. This new problem seems to happen whenever the power settings cause the display to go to sleep mode. This is a new problem that I am seeing with the 12.1 Beta1 on a system with Intel graphics (the same system that was giving me a system freeze in 11.4).

#11

It dose sound like a graphics driver issue
Though i have not seen the above isue with the mouse .I did have a bunch of openGL issues with nouveau
and had with the kms kernel and kms nvidia driver in the repos

I had to change out the kernel for the NON kms desktop
remove nouveau completely
install the .run ( the hard way - that is not hard)
then rebuild the boot image
then reboot

the .run should give you very good video speed . and might clear up the mouse icon problem .

#12

You have absolutely described the problem I am having in #2. However, in my case even CTRL-ALT-DEL does nothing. It takes a hard power down to bring the system back up. init 3 from a command window has the same effect – partial shutdown requiring application of the power switch to bring things back on line. Having to power down like that both offends my sensibilities and causes me concern regarding whether something will be hosed by such a draconian shutdown.

#13

On 10/13/2011 03:16 AM, mklange wrote:
>
> You have absolutely described the problem I am having in #2.
> However, in my case even CTRL-ALT-DEL does nothing.

Ctrl+Alt+Del does nothing here either, and it shouldn’t do anything to
your system…

because Ctrl+Alt+Del is a MS-Windows key sequence, and (to belabor the
obvious) openSUSE is not Windows…lots and lots of things work very
differently here…

> It takes a hard
> power down to bring the system back up. init 3 from a command window
> has the same effect – partial shutdown requiring application of the
> power switch to bring things back on line.

that is because init 3 is not a runlevel which equals shutdown! init 3
is a run level where you can (from the command line) direct the
operations of (say) a mail server, a name server, a file server, an FTP
server, and on and on and on…

however, if you (after log in as root at the command line) issue this
magic incantation, i’d expect it to smoothly and completely shut down
and power off the system


shutdown -h now

however my guess is the stupid mouse can be ‘reset’ to normal
without either a power button shutdown, or any full system shut down,
by simply shutting down and restarting the X Window system, this way:

  1. Ctrl+Alt+F1
  2. at the command line log in as root
  3. type/enter
init 3
  1. when activity has ceased, type/enter
init 5
  1. WAIT for it to do all the ordered and routine shutdown
    activities…maybe it takes a while–be patient (remember, there is
    trouble in the system which needs to be cleared up)…when you see:
Master Resource Control: runlevel 3 has been ... reached

, then
6. type and enter

init 5

and your fresh desktop should
rebuild, and appear again …hopefully with a fully functioning mouse…

> Having to power down like
> that both offends my sensibilities and causes me concern regarding
> whether something will be hosed by such a draconian shutdown.

please try to avoid using MS-Window’s normal ‘fixes’ in openSUSE…the
method i’ve given above is one of many *nix-like system routines in
which a desktop might be brought into line again without danger of being
“hosed by such a draconian shutdown”…

i’m pretty sure once you turn off desktop effects this mouse problem
will be history…and, once the people at nvidia provide us a driver
good for you graphics you will be able to turn on the effects again and
have a happy face!

but, from your first post i see you are running the “nouveau” and i’m
not at all convinced that is the best one for you (i think there is
probably one which will show up as “nvidia” and suggest your careful
attention to http://tinyurl.com/37v9y7m might result in you finding a
link to the nvidia driver where you will see a BIG green button named
“Install NVIDIA via 1 Click” just below some text saying “For all NVIDIA
current cards (Geforce 6 and newer), click here:”

i think i forgot to say -=WELCOME=- new poster…gather up your
patience, there are lots of things different here!

–
DD
Caveat
openSUSE®, the “German Automobiles” of operating systems

#14

This response was in response to the comment made previously.

> It takes a hard
> power down to bring the system back up. init 3 from a command window
> has the same effect – partial shutdown requiring application of the
> power switch to bring things back on line.

that is because init 3 is not a runlevel which equals shutdown! init 3
is a run level where you can (from the command line) direct the
operations of (say) a mail server, a name server, a file server, an FTP
server, and on and on and on…

however, if you (after log in as root at the command line) issue this
magic incantation, i’d expect it to smoothly and completely shut down
and power off the system


shutdown -h now

All this would be true if issuing the command init 3 actually resulted in a runlevel 3 from the lost cursor state. It does not. init 3, just like shutdown now results in a gray screen with no further interaction possible.

however my guess is the stupid mouse can be ‘reset’ to normal
without either a power button shutdown, or any full system shut down,
by simply shutting down and restarting the X Window system, this way:

  1. Ctrl+Alt+F1
  2. at the command line log in as root
  3. type/enter
init 3
  1. when activity has ceased, type/enter
init 5
  1. WAIT for it to do all the ordered and routine shutdown
    activities…maybe it takes a while–be patient (remember, there is
    trouble in the system which needs to be cleared up)…when you see:
Master Resource Control: runlevel 3 has been ... reached

, then
6. type and enter

init 5

and your fresh desktop should
rebuild, and appear again …hopefully with a fully functioning mouse…

As stated above, init 3 does start a runlevel change, however, when the cursor lost condition occurs, the only result obtained from either shutdown or init is getting out of the window manager, a few disk thrashes, and then a gray screen with no further interaction possible.

> Having to power down like
> that both offends my sensibilities and causes me concern regarding
> whether something will be hosed by such a draconian shutdown.

please try to avoid using MS-Window’s normal ‘fixes’ in openSUSE…the
method i’ve given above is one of many *nix-like system routines in
which a desktop might be brought into line again without danger of being
“hosed by such a draconian shutdown”…

Please lose the condescension. I’ve been using unix or unix-like systems since Sun Solaris in the late 80’s, SGI IRIX in the 90’s, and started using OpenSuse in 2007 for my home machine. That is one of the reasons having to hard power down the system bothers me.

11.4 is the first time on this machine that I’ve had the lost cursor problem. Same machine, same graphics card, only loading of 11.4 and the associated KDE update is different. Using the Nvidia driver resulted in very poor graphics performance, that’s why I went to the nouveau driver.

i’m pretty sure once you turn off desktop effects this mouse problem
will be history…and, once the people at nvidia provide us a driver
good for you graphics you will be able to turn on the effects again and
have a happy face!

I will try that to see if the problem goes away.

but, from your first post i see you are running the “nouveau” and i’m
not at all convinced that is the best one for you (i think there is
probably one which will show up as “nvidia” and suggest your careful
attention to openSUSE Graphic Card Practical Theory Guide for Users might result in you finding a
link to the nvidia driver where you will see a BIG green button named
“Install NVIDIA via 1 Click” just below some text saying “For all NVIDIA
current cards (Geforce 6 and newer), click here:”

i think i forgot to say -=WELCOME=- new poster…gather up your
patience, there are lots of things different here!

–
DD
Caveat
openSUSE®, the “German Automobiles” of operating systems

As mentioned above, I first tried the Nvidia driver and was very unhappy with the graphics performance. Slow would be too glowing a statement for the performance I encountered. The nouveau driver was recommended in another forum (not sure which one it was, this was a while ago). It definitely made a positive difference.

#15

In KDE, CTRL-ALT-DEL brings up the logout menu on my 11.4 systems.

In a virtual terminal (after CTRL-ALT-F1), I seem to recall that it reboots (“shutdown -r”), though I didn’t retest that for this post since I didn’t want to reboot.

#16

On 10/14/2011 05:16 AM, mklange wrote:
> Please lose the condescension. I’ve been using unix or unix-like
> systems since Sun Solaris in the late 80’s, SGI IRIX in the 90’s, and
> started using OpenSuse in 2007 for my home machine. That is one of the
> reasons having to hard power down the system bothers me.

most folks who first posted here (like you) this week without declaring
their 20+ years of *nix experience and who are surprised that
Ctrl+Alt+Del does nothing–well, something over 95% of those are recent
arrivals from a totally different operating system needing a LOT of help
to get going…

i tried to provide that help and am now sorry i did. you may call my
attempt as ‘condescension’ but i’d call it perfectly targeted, given
the expertise info provided!

i’ll try not to bother you again.

–
DD
openSUSE®, the “German Automobiles” of operating systems

#17

As mentioned above, I first tried the Nvidia driver and was very unhappy with the graphics performance.

there is a solution , that was posted
all testing shows that the proprietary nvidia driver has BETTER performance than the nouveau driver ( about a factor of 2 better, i think )

with the open nouveau installed BY DEFAULT there** IS A LOT of work** that one needs to do to remove it and install the proprietary nvidia driver
and the one click dose NOT fully install the driver from nvidia
it installs A nvidia driver BUT one that might not work with some opengl programs ( the new kms kernel is used )

I am guessing that is the video problems you had ( a not fully installed driver - a mix of the two )
or there was a BAD driver a bit back the 280 had a bug - now fixed and the 260 i think also had a bug with the then current kernel

and a guess is that the mouse issue is do to the " nouveau" driver

#18

That may very well be the case. So how much work am I in for in getting nouveau completely uninstalled? I’m assuming that the full install you are speaking of is the one posted earlier that includes rebuilding the boot image?

#19

Look, what you provided is helpful and as I mentioned in a previous post, I will try those sequences next time the problem occurs as well as trying to run with desktop effects turned off – that’s helpful information and I appreciate it. However, even if I were someone totally new to the OS, some of what you posted would be considered somewhat off-putting, for example, the comment about "A BIG green button labeled ‘One Click Install’ ". How would anyone, even a newcomer, read that without feeling insulted?

#20

On 10/14/2011 06:06 AM, nrickert wrote:
>
> In KDE, CTRL-ALT-DEL brings up the logout menu on my 11.4 systems.

seems that is a recent change in the default behavior of KDE…which
is one more reason for ‘purist’ to complain about how much the KDE devs
seem to want to make their DE look and act like another system…

> In a virtual terminal (after CTRL-ALT-F1), I seem to recall that it
> reboots (“shutdown -r”), though I didn’t retest that for this post since
> I didn’t want to reboot.

yes, -r is for reboot and -h for halt (which is what the OP’s power
switch kill will also accomplish)

but, in both cases the time for the event must either be specified as
some point in the future, or ‘now’…

–
DD
openSUSE®, the “German Automobiles” of operating systems