How to restart only missing/invisible mouse pointer/cursor?
For some reason, the mouse pointer on my Ubuntu 10.04 PC disappears after the computer is woken up from suspend. That PC is missing a keyboard, so I can fix this by logging via ssh, and issuing:
sudo service gdm restart
... however, this basically restarts gnome, and will close any applications that may have been running.
Another way to solve this is to set up that PC as a synergy slave - and then move the mouse from the synergy master to the slave desktop; this brings the mouse pointer back.
Is it possible to run some command, such that I don't need to restart X (or gdm) but I'll effectively restart the mouse pointer code? Then I could put this into a script on the desktop, and be able to recover the mouse pointer after suspend without needing a second machine (even with the mouse pointer invisible, mouseovers on icons are still rendered, so I could target this icon).
Solution 1:
this may fix the problem.
If you are stuck with no mouse movement on your laptop (touchpad) then press the key combinations Alt+F2 and type in
gksudo modprobe -r psmouse
Type in the password, press enter, and then press Alt+F2 again for entering the following
gksudo modprobe psmouse
Thats it. Your mouse pointer will start working again.
If you like to do it through the terminal, then type in gnome-terminal after pressing Alt+F2 When the terminal open up type the following
sudo modprobe -r psmouse
or
sudo modprobe psmouse
If your usb mouse is getting stuck, then use the following command after pressing Alt+F2
gksudo /etc/init.d/hotplug restart
Solution 2:
I am using Xubuntu 16.04. The suggestion posted in this answer by Ulad Kasach worked for me.
Bring the cursor back with Ctrl+Alt+F1 followed by Ctrl+Alt+F7
Solution 3:
Finally, found a solution for this:
From #696855 - How do you hide the mouse pointer under Linux/X11? - Stack Overflow; I heard about unclutter, so just ran
sudo apt-get install unclutter
And then put the following in a script on the desktop, called, say unclutter.sh:
unclutter -idle 1 -root -grab -visible
... and make sure you've done chmod +x unclutter.sh.
Then, after the mouse pointer disappears after suspend, use mouseover of icons to target the script and run it; this will start unclutter, which will simply hide (the already invisible) mouse pointer after 1 second of mouse inactivity; but then when you move the mouse after that, finally the mouse pointer will show :) ... however note that to stop unclutter after that, you'd have to do from terminal:
sudo killall unclutter
... as unclutter would be, at that point, running in the background.
Note: also tried, via #15 / Bug #337926 “vino: mouse cursor stays in upper left corner” : Bugs : “vino” package : Ubuntu, to use:
xdotool mousemove 100 100
but this does not make the mouse pointer show again.
Btw, one can look in the synergy source, WebSVN - synergy - /trunk/, and the "reset" of the mouse pointer seems to be coded in ./lib/platform/CXWindowsScreen.cpp.
Solution 4:
This answer from It's F.O.S.S. worked for me once.
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.cursor active false
The second time, it did not work, and neither did any of the above suggestions. So after these, I just closed the lid of my laptop to suspend it, reopened it, and the pointer was back.
Solution 5:
Had that problem the other day. I switched to another terminal (Ctrl+Alt+F1) and then came back to the current window (Ctrl+Alt+F7). It did the trick for me.