Periodically, my mouse cursor will turn black and/or pixelated, and I
haven't been able to find a reason for this or a fix other than to
restart X. It seems to happen most often when browsing with firefox
under KDE, but I see this behavior more often (and more randomly) under
Gnome.

So, two questions:

1. Does anyone have any idea what's corrupting the cursor?

2. Is there a way to fix it short of CTRL-ALT-BS?

This isn't a new problem for me, and has been a problem with Etch since
before it went stable, and continues to be a problem for me under Lenny.
Suggestions welcome.

--
"Oh, look: rocks!"
-- Doctor Who, "Destiny of the Daleks"


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Todd A. Jacobs wrote:
> Periodically, my mouse cursor will turn black and/or pixelated, and I
> haven't been able to find a reason for this or a fix other than to
> restart X. It seems to happen most often when browsing with firefox
> under KDE, but I see this behavior more often (and more randomly) under
> Gnome.
>
> So, two questions:
>
> 1. Does anyone have any idea what's corrupting the cursor?
>
> 2. Is there a way to fix it short of CTRL-ALT-BS?
>
> This isn't a new problem for me, and has been a problem with Etch since
> before it went stable, and continues to be a problem for me under Lenny.
> Suggestions welcome.
>

I have an old Sony PCG-XG laptop that had major problems with the cursor
under X. In this case, I was able to solve the problem by using an
"Option" line in the Device section of xorg.conf, for the video card.
The card is a Neomagic MagicMedia 256XL+, so this option may not work
for you, or you may have to search out a similar action but different name.

Option "SWCursor" "true"

This forces my card to always use a software cursor, even if the driver
thinks there's a hardware one available.

I hope this at least s get you looking in the right direction

--
Bob McGowan
Symantec, Inc.