mouse and window focus

[gs3user007]

Bear with me, as my issue is very off-the-wall, and I'm not sure I can accurately explain it, but I'll start at the beginning:

I recently upgraded from 8.10 to 9.04. I did have some issues during the upgrade. I don't fully understand what they were, but with some help from the folks on the irc channel, I did a single force install command, and things went through with shining colors.

Currently though, my mouse has some sort of wierd click and/or window focus issue. I fired up xev to see what was registering and what wasn't. Atm, the behavior is as follows:
The only thing that responds to my mouse is the taskbar. I can't left or right click on anything in any window, nor do any of the clicks register in xev. A reboot returns things to normal, briefly.

I've tried three different mice, all behave exactly the same. Two are wired, one is wireless. All are Logitech, and are verified working on other machines running both windows XP and another machine with 9.04.

Once in a while, the mouse will change focus. I haven't been able to figure out to make it do so at will, but suppose focus is given to firefox, then no clicks register anywhere outside of firefox. From experience I can also say this: Having vlc playing media, and clicking inside the video pane (either to access the menus or go full screen with a double click) passes the clicks through vlc back down to firefox.

I did try a "mv ~/.kde kde.backup" in case it was a configuration issue with kde. This did not fix the problem.

I'll be loitering and refreshing the page. Any and all assistance will be appreciated.


EDIT:
I've also now tried a fourth mouse, a generic compaq brand one. It occurred to me that the other three mice were all usb. This one is PS/2. It also experiences the same clicking/focus problem.

EDIT (again):
I checked if there were any updates for my system... There aren't, but apt-get upgrade did inform me that three packages have been "kept back":
gwenview kdegraphics xubuntu-desktop
Is it possible that kdegraphics could be causing this? If so, how is this fixed?

[toad]

Re: mouse and window focus

Hm, a couple of thoughts: afaik mouse and such stuff is handled by hal and Xorg between them. Do you get any meaningful output from

cat Xorg.0.log |grep mouse

Watch out for the markers at the beginning of each line.

Here my output:

toad@deskarch 83\17 /var/log > cat Xorg.0.log |grep mouse
(==) RADEON(0): Silken mouse enabled
(II) config/hal: Adding input device Macintosh mouse button emulation
(**) Macintosh mouse button emulation: always reports core events
(**) Macintosh mouse button emulation: Device: "/dev/input/event0"
(II) Macintosh mouse button emulation: Found 3 mouse buttons
(II) Macintosh mouse button emulation: Found x and y relative axes
(II) Macintosh mouse button emulation: Configuring as mouse
(**) Macintosh mouse button emulation: YAxisMapping: buttons 4 and 5
(**) Macintosh mouse button emulation: EmulateWheelButton: 4, EmulateWheelInertia: 10, EmulateWheelTimeout: 200
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Macintosh mouse button emulation" (type: MOUSE)
(**) Macintosh mouse button emulation: (accel) keeping acceleration scheme 1
(**) Macintosh mouse button emulation: (accel) filter chain progression: 2.00
(**) Macintosh mouse button emulation: (accel) filter stage 0: 20.00 ms
(**) Macintosh mouse button emulation: (accel) set acceleration profile 0
(II) ImExPS/2 Generic Explorer Mouse: Found 5 mouse buttons
(II) ImExPS/2 Generic Explorer Mouse: Configuring as mouse

And here what the markers mean (taken from kdm.log):

Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
(++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.

It is most unlikely that this is down to the DE - but to make sure you could just install XFCE4 or better LXDE and double check

[gs3user007]

Re: mouse and window focus

Here's the output from mine:

/var/log$ cat Xorg.0.log | grep mouse
(==) NVIDIA(0): Silken mouse enabled
(II) ImPS/2 Generic Wheel Mouse: Found 3 mouse buttons
(II) ImPS/2 Generic Wheel Mouse: Configuring as mouse
(II) Plus More Enterprise LTD. USB-compliant keyboard: Found 1 mouse buttons
(II) Plus More Enterprise LTD. USB-compliant keyboard: Configuring as mouse
(II) config/hal: Adding input device Macintosh mouse button emulation
(**) Macintosh mouse button emulation: always reports core events
(**) Macintosh mouse button emulation: Device: "/dev/input/event2"
(II) Macintosh mouse button emulation: Found 3 mouse buttons
(II) Macintosh mouse button emulation: Found x and y relative axes
(II) Macintosh mouse button emulation: Configuring as mouse
(**) Macintosh mouse button emulation: YAxisMapping: buttons 4 and 5
(**) Macintosh mouse button emulation: EmulateWheelButton: 4, EmulateWheelInertia: 10, EmulateWheelTimeout: 200
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Macintosh mouse button emulation" (type: MOUSE)
(**) Macintosh mouse button emulation: (accel) keeping acceleration scheme 1
(**) Macintosh mouse button emulation: (accel) filter chain progression: 2.00
(**) Macintosh mouse button emulation: (accel) filter stage 0: 20.00 ms
(**) Macintosh mouse button emulation: (accel) set acceleration profile 0


I went ahead and fixed those packages that were being kept back, so that's not the problem. I'll hop on over to xubuntu for a while and see if the mouse problem persists.

[toad]

Re: mouse and window focus

Anything in your error log?

BTW, which NVIDIA card do you have, which driver are you using and do you, for any reason, have an xorg.conf?

[gs3user007]

Re: mouse and window focus

I don't know where the error log is.

My card is a GeForce 6200.

I don't know which driver I'm using, but I did have to install a new one right after I installed 9.04.

I have no idea if I have an xorg.conf. How do I find out?

[toad]

Re: mouse and window focus

error.log is, same as all the other logs, sitting in /var/log/

xorg.conf may be in /etc/X11 - but the fact that you are not familiar with it suggests that you don't have one.

Have you tried installing LXDE?

[gs3user007]

Re: mouse and window focus

Okay, I don't see any files named error.log.

I do have an xorg.conf. As well as an entire list of timestamped backups. I think nvidia-settings uses xorg.conf, doesn't it?

What's LXDE?

I've spent some time in xfce... and the mouse has been working flawlessly, as expected.

[toad]

Re: mouse and window focus

Okay, I don't see any files named error.log.

Hm, I'm not running kubuntu, so no either you are incredibly lucky or kubuntu does not pipe error messages through to a single file? Don't know.

Interesting that XFCE works well with the mouse - means it does work.

LXDE is another lightweight DE. Worth looking into if on the one hand you like the looks of kde and the speed of xfce

So what is different in kde to xfce - have you got compositing enabled? Desktop effects and all that? Try disabling all. Does it work now? Next is to check each effect and see who the culprit is.

[gs3user007]

Re: mouse and window focus

Okay, I switched back over to kde, and unchecked "Enable Desktop Effects". Mouse has been working fine since then. Something in the advanced effects is causing the problem apparently. Any thoughts on figuring out which effect is the culprit? Or maybe the entire system is the fault?

[toad]

Re: mouse and window focus

Any thoughts on figuring out which effect is the culprit

Enable desktop effects in general but disable every one in "all effects" - apply. Now select an effect you're after and apply. Does it still work? If so, on to the next one...