Eratic Cursor Behavior

[Rick Stevens]

On Wed, 2005-11-16 at 00:09 -0700, karlp at ourldsfamily.com wrote:
> On Thu, November 10, 2005 1:00 pm, Rick Stevens said:
> > On Wed, 2005-11-09 at 14:15 -0700, karlp at ourldsfamily.com wrote:
> >> FC4
> >> KDE
> >>
> >> Occasionally, and I can't replicate it so know this is a stretch to
> >> ask..., when I am using my mouse to raise windows (mouseover mode, not
> >> click), or even when playing a game, any game, the cursor will disappear
> >> from before my eyes and appear in a corner of the screen. Not having the
> >> best of eyes, sometimes it takes a moment longer than is comfortable to
> >> locate the cursor so I can get back to entertaining myself...
> >>
> >> What types of things should/could I look for? Could it be a poor, or
> >> mismatched driver in XF86Config?
> >
> > Uhm, I've seen some interaction between gpm and X on occasion, however
> > I've most often seen that because of a loose connection on the mouse
> > or a dirty mouse ball or rollers.
> >
> > "Have you washed your mouse balls recently?"  :-)
> 
> No, they're not from IBM... Okay, I have a eunich mouse with a red scar
> where the incision was, which lights up brightly when the mouse is
> moved...
> 
> I've heard that older-style mice, or cheap ones, can be erratic like this.
> I got Logitech's least expensive model and maybe that's it.

That, or a flakey KVM, if you're using one.  While you're in X, try
killing off the gpm process (that's the command line mouse helper):

	# killall gpm

and see if things improve.

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-     If Bill Gates got a dime for every time Windows crashes...     -
-              ...oh, wait.  He does.  THAT explains it!             -
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