GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 711582
Cursor is sometimes invisible or incorrectly themed
Last modified: 2013-11-09 22:24:49 UTC
I run "classic" GNOME with the KWin window manager. When I right-click in any GNOME/GTK application (gnome-terminal, gnome-panel, geany, etc.), the cursor is not what it's supposed to be. Depending on the situation it is: * Immediately after login trough gdm, it shows a black pointer. I saved this pointer to a file and it looks like the left_ptr from the DMZ-Black theme. I use the DMZ-White theme. http://bugsfiles.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=83390 * Immediately after manual start of Xorg, window manager and one program, it shows the standard Xorg 'X' pointer. http://bugsfiles.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=83392 * Immediately after starting intel-virtual-output and having the screens reconfigured automatically (I assume gnome-settings-daemon does this) the pointer is invisible. I saved this pointer to a file and it is an 8×8 completely transparent image. http://bugsfiles.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=83391 When this happens, if I start the metacity window manager, the pointer is no longer invisible/unthemed, it's just the regular (themed) left_ptr. When I then start KWin again, the pointer is still normal. I don't think this is a driver or a mesa issue, because it happens on an Intel card as well as an NVIDIA card with both the binary driver and noueveau. The KWin people are convinced this is a GNOME/GTK bug - see https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327118 Steps to reproduce: 0. If you have KWin and xterm installed, get a console and kill all X servers, then skip to step 7. 1. Download Kubuntu 13.10 ISO, boot it (e.g. in a VM) 2. Click 'Try Kubuntu' 3. Open Konsole 4. Type sudo chvt 1 5. Type sudo stop lightdm 6. Type sudo apt-get install xterm geany 7. Type startx bash 8. Type kwin & geany & (or your other favorite GTK application - geany one does not have a lot of dependencies) 9. Right-click in geany
how do you determine 'what its supposed to be' ? most likely, you are just missing the necessary cursor theme setting in this mixed environment
When I run metacity and right-click it's just left_ptr, which makes sense to me.
Not much to do here on the gtk side, I'm afraid. Most of the time GTK+ applications inherit the cursor from the root window - metacity sets that - if your other window managers don't, that is a problem on their side. If the GTK+ app sets its own cursor, it is taken from the current cursor theme, which is determined by an X setting. Possibly, your mixed environment does not have an Xsettings manager running. All of this has to be debugged on your system.
How do I determine the cursor of the root window? I'm running gnome-settings-daemon.
Thomas Lübking (KWin): "the idea that the WM would be the item to set the session theme seems odd to me." There's a program kapplymousetheme that fixes this, but that would need to be run every time it breaks (e.g. by running intel-virtual-output).
Filed another bug: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=71439