[solved] Cursor and menus stop working intermittently under Xfce

rubystallion · 2018-05-05 01:19:57

Relatively frequently my mouse cursor will stop changing shape and clicking anywhere won't have any effect (even with xdotool), although the cursor can still be moved normally. At those times, menus in menubars and context menus cannot be opened, although the respective menubar item (e.g. "File") will turn blue when I press the corresponding shortcut. In other ways the system is still normally usable. Once that happened I could click anywhere on the screen and the effect would be the same as clicking on the keyboard icon in the tray, even though xdotool getmouselocation gives the correct locations and I can get correct hover-over tooltips when moving the mouse. The problem happened before configuring the keyboard in any way and before installing any input methods.

Setup:
System: Kernel: 4.16.6-1-ARCH x86_64 Desktop: Xfce 4.12.4
tk: Gtk 2.24.31
Machine: ASUS TUF GAMING FX504GE_FX80GE v: 1.0
Graphics: Card-1: Intel driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0
Card-2: NVIDIA GP107M [GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile] driver: N/A bus ID: 01:00.0
Display: server: X.Org 1.19.6 driver: modesetting unloaded: nouveau resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: N/A v: N/A direct render: N/A
Mouse: Logitech M705

Steps I tried with no effect on the problem:
- Changed window manager from xfwm to metacity and back (at least xfwm4 --replace reliably makes the desktop work again, even if sometimes just for a few seconds)
- Turned off compositing for xfwm and on again
- Set the number of workspaces to 1

Last edited by rubystallion (2018-05-10 05:36:11)

seth · 2018-05-05 05:47:58

Sounds as if the panel (?) grabs (at least) the mouse.

xdotool key "XF86LogGrabInfo"

Will print the current active+passive grabs into the Xorg log.

rubystallion · 2018-05-05 07:06:09

Looks like you're right that it was an issue with the panel, I moved items on the panel around, removed them and added them back again and now I don't have the issue any more, even after rebooting. For reference here's the Xorg logs after running the above command with and without the mentioned problems. Thanks a lot!

Edit: Hmm, the problem reappeared and even killing xfce4-panel doesn't resolve the problem in existing windows. I'll troubleshoot some more and post updates.

Last edited by rubystallion (2018-05-05 07:56:06)

seth · 2018-05-05 13:31:32

[   103.653] (II) Printing all currently active device grabs:
[   103.653] Active grab 0x3600000 (core) on device 'Virtual core pointer' (2):
============= This line====================================> [   103.653]       client pid 1095 fcitx 
[   103.653]       at 86656 (from passive grab) (implicit) (device thawed, state 1)
[   103.653]         core event mask 0x3807d
[   103.653]       passive grab type 4, detail 0x0, activating key 0
[   103.653]       owner-events false, kb 1 ptr 1, confine 0, cursor 0x0
[   103.653] (II) End list of active device grabs

rubystallion · 2018-05-10 05:35:44

I can confirm that after replacing fcitx I didn't run into problems all these days I'll mark this as solved, thank you, seth!

Arch Linux

#1 2018-05-05 01:19:57

[solved] Cursor and menus stop working intermittently under Xfce

#2 2018-05-05 05:47:58

Re: [solved] Cursor and menus stop working intermittently under Xfce

#3 2018-05-05 07:06:09

Re: [solved] Cursor and menus stop working intermittently under Xfce

#4 2018-05-05 13:31:32

Re: [solved] Cursor and menus stop working intermittently under Xfce

#5 2018-05-10 05:35:44

Re: [solved] Cursor and menus stop working intermittently under Xfce

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