Arch Linux

Gumper

Member

From: U.S.A.

Registered: 2009-10-26

Posts: 132

[Solved] Can't change mouse cursor theme in openbox

I'm running openbox in a KDE installation and I'm having troubles changing the mouse cursor used in openbox. I created the file "~/.Xdefaults" and placed the following in it but when I reboot the cursor doesn't seem to change.

Xcursor.theme: Vanilla-DMZ

The "Vanilla-DMZ" theme is installed in my /usr/share/icons folder.

Any ideas on what's going wrong? Perhaps something from KDE messing it up?

Last edited by Gumper (2010-05-18 02:42:02)

---

Ready yourselves, ready yourselves
Let us shine the light of Jesus in the darkest night
Ready yourselves, ready yourselves
May the powers of darkness tremble as our praises rise .... Casting Crowns-Until The Whole World Hears.

Knute

Member

From: Minot, ND

Registered: 2009-03-17

Posts: 604

Re: [Solved] Can't change mouse cursor theme in openbox

Try changing it to the following:

Xcursor*theme: Vanilla-DMZ

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Knute

Gumper

Member

From: U.S.A.

Registered: 2009-10-26

Posts: 132

Re: [Solved] Can't change mouse cursor theme in openbox

Try changing it to the following:

Xcursor*theme: Vanilla-DMZ

I tried your suggestions and the cursor still won't change.

---

Ready yourselves, ready yourselves
Let us shine the light of Jesus in the darkest night
Ready yourselves, ready yourselves
May the powers of darkness tremble as our praises rise .... Casting Crowns-Until The Whole World Hears.

Knute

Member

From: Minot, ND

Registered: 2009-03-17

Posts: 604

Re: [Solved] Can't change mouse cursor theme in openbox

Ok.  Are you restarting the X-server completely, or just telling openbox to restart?

To be more precise, when you log into your computer, is it a graphical login or does it come up to a console?

If it comes up to a console, simply log out of your X session, then at the console, startx.

If it's graphical, you will want to actually kill the Xserver and restart it.

Here's a wiki article about the various methods: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Display_Manager

Basically, if kdm, or xdm or whatever is started as a daemon,  you can switch to console with <ctrl><alt><F-whatever> and then as superuser/root, you can go into /etc/rc.d/ and simply  do

#/etc/rc.d/kdm restart

(substitute for the display mangaer as necessary)

Or for the inittab method, you will want to make sure that your inittab is set up as it says in the article, then as root use the command

# telinit <runlevel>

to change the runlevel to 3 and then again back to 5.

My guess is that the server isn't shutting down completely.  If that is indeed the case, then the .Xdefaults file isn't being reread.

HTH

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Knute

akephalos

Member

From: Romania

Registered: 2009-04-22

Posts: 114

Re: [Solved] Can't change mouse cursor theme in openbox

Gumper, by "changing" the cursor you mean having a different cursor at startup, I assume?

I'm doing these things for my cursor to work well, I'm on XFCE, though:
- in ~/.Xdefaults:

Xcursor.theme: Vanilla-DMZ
Xcursor.size: 24

- then link:
mkdir ~/.icons

$ mkdir ~/.icons
$ ln -s /usr/share/icons/Vanilla-DMZ ~/.icons/default

- and this is how I launch the session from .xinitrc, else I had cursor problems (forgot what), note the "ck-launch-session" before the executable:

exec ck-launch-session startxfce4

---

This is my current working setup, it was done quite a while ago, imo you should try each stuff separately and see if one of them solves the problem.

Gumper

Member

From: U.S.A.

Registered: 2009-10-26

Posts: 132

Re: [Solved] Can't change mouse cursor theme in openbox

Ok.  Are you restarting the X-server completely, or just telling openbox to restart?

To be more precise, when you log into your computer, is it a graphical login or does it come up to a console?

If it comes up to a console, simply log out of your X session, then at the console, startx.

If it's graphical, you will want to actually kill the Xserver and restart it.

Here's a wiki article about the various methods: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Display_Manager

Basically, if kdm, or xdm or whatever is started as a daemon,  you can switch to console with <ctrl><alt><F-whatever> and then as superuser/root, you can go into /etc/rc.d/ and simply  do

#/etc/rc.d/kdm restart

(substitute for the display mangaer as necessary)

Or for the inittab method, you will want to make sure that your inittab is set up as it says in the article, then as root use the command

# telinit <runlevel>

to change the runlevel to 3 and then again back to 5.

My guess is that the server isn't shutting down completely.  If that is indeed the case, then the .Xdefaults file isn't being reread.

HTH

I'm using kdm to log into my machine. After changing the .Xdefaults file I'm rebooting my machine completely just to make sure that x restarts.

---

Ready yourselves, ready yourselves
Let us shine the light of Jesus in the darkest night
Ready yourselves, ready yourselves
May the powers of darkness tremble as our praises rise .... Casting Crowns-Until The Whole World Hears.

Gumper

Member

From: U.S.A.

Registered: 2009-10-26

Posts: 132

Re: [Solved] Can't change mouse cursor theme in openbox

- then link:
mkdir ~/.icons

$ mkdir ~/.icons
$ ln -s /usr/share/icons/Vanilla-DMZ ~/.icons/default

This took care of it for me. Not sure why I have to do that but it works.:D

Thanks!

---

Ready yourselves, ready yourselves
Let us shine the light of Jesus in the darkest night
Ready yourselves, ready yourselves
May the powers of darkness tremble as our praises rise .... Casting Crowns-Until The Whole World Hears.

akephalos

Member

From: Romania

Registered: 2009-04-22

Posts: 114

Re: [Solved] Can't change mouse cursor theme in openbox

This took care of it for me. Not sure why I have to do that but it works.:D

Thanks!

I'm not sure, but I think it is an OpenBox caprice.

You're welcome, I'm glad it worked.

EdgardoSantiago

Member

From: Tampa, Fl

Registered: 2010-06-06

Posts: 10

Re: [Solved] Can't change mouse cursor theme in openbox

Worked for me too, they should add it to the arch wiki

akephalos

Member

From: Romania

Registered: 2009-04-22

Posts: 114

Re: [Solved] Can't change mouse cursor theme in openbox

Worked for me too, they should add it to the arch wiki

I had the feeling that I read these on the wiki. Anyway, I could add that myself (you can add that, too ), but are you talking about the icons solution, or something else?

Last edited by akephalos (2010-06-30 06:13:00)

EdgardoSantiago

Member

From: Tampa, Fl

Registered: 2010-06-06

Posts: 10

Re: [Solved] Can't change mouse cursor theme in openbox

Gumper, by "changing" the cursor you mean having a different cursor at startup, I assume?

I'm doing these things for my cursor to work well, I'm on XFCE, though:
- in ~/.Xdefaults:

Xcursor.theme: Vanilla-DMZ
Xcursor.size: 24

- then link:
mkdir ~/.icons

$ mkdir ~/.icons
$ ln -s /usr/share/icons/Vanilla-DMZ ~/.icons/default

- and this is how I launch the session from .xinitrc, else I had cursor problems (forgot what), note the "ck-launch-session" before the executable:

exec ck-launch-session startxfce4

---

This is my current working setup, it was done quite a while ago, imo you should try each stuff separately and see if one of them solves the problem.

Im talking about this

akephalos

Member

From: Romania

Registered: 2009-04-22

Posts: 114

Re: [Solved] Can't change mouse cursor theme in openbox

Im talking about this

OK . I've added the symlink stuff to the wiki: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ope … se_cursors . There is no evidence that the d-bus (ck-launch-session) stuff actually helps, is it? I can't test it right now, but it's written in the wiki, anyway, at the "Stand-alone window manager" section.