Bug#942801: gnome-shell: mouse pointer sometimes becomes invisible in Overview

[Simon McVittie]

Control: retitle -1 gnome-shell: mouse pointer sometimes becomes invisible in Overview
Control: reassign -1 src:linux 5.2.17-1
Control: affects -1 gnome-shell
Control: forwarded -1 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=111541

This seems to be a kernel regression, perhaps already fixed in unstable,
so I'm reassigning it.

On Mon, 21 Oct 2019 at 20:04:57 +0200, Thomas Renard wrote:
> The mouse pointer gets invisible on desktop background and the shell
> elements after some desktop actions. Application windows have a
> full functional mouse pointer. Unfortunately I cannot explain which
> situation gets the pointer invisible, probably suspending the laptop and
> start it again.
> 
> * Move the mouse pointer around an application window (pointer can be
>   seen)
> * Move the pointer to the background or to the top bar
> 
> Expected: Mouse pointer is still visible
> Actual behaviour: Mouse pointer gets invisible
...
> There are some ways to force a visible mouse pointer again, like opening
> the "change background" dialog. But after some actions (switching between
> windows of different programs) the cursor is invisible again.
...
> Kernel: Linux 5.2.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
> Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE

On Mon, 21 Oct 2019 at 20:01:04 +0100, Simon McVittie wrote:
> Could this be <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/issues/1165>,
> possibly fixed by the patch in
> <https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=111541>?
> 
> This might be a bug in libmutter or in the kernel, upstream seem to
> be unsure; the regression seems to coincide with upgrading to Linux 5.2.
> If you install the older 4.19.x kernel from Debian 10 'buster' and reboot
> into that, does this problem disappear?
> 
> I can sometimes reproduce the mouse pointer disappearing when I go to the
> Overview (move mouse to top left corner or press Windows key).
> 
> Workaround: do something that should change the mouse pointer, like
> moving the mouse over the Search box in the Overview (this is difficult
> when you can't see the pointer and have to guess its location from which
> window is highlighted).

On Mon, 21 Oct 2019 at 21:32:06 +0200, Thomas Renard wrote:
> Found this upstream bug too.
>¯
> I did it the other way round and installed the 5.3 kernel from unstable
> (5.3.7-1). By now the problem does not occur (about an hour working with
> this kernel).
>¯
> So the solving of the problem might be: waiting for 5.3 in testing ;-)