Strange behaviour - focus issues

thie · 2023-08-16 08:23:46

I am using Xubuntu 23.04 on an old Acer laptop and am running into some strange behaviour (which was also present in previous Xubuntu versions).
It's an older laptop with 4 GB of memory and I typically have only one application running (usually firefox). After it has been running fine for a while (time period varies, sometimes it is 'bad' almost directly after startup), I can't use the mouse anymore to operate firefox or e.g. open the Xubuntu menu. The mouse pointer is still visible and moves around normally. If you hover over a desktop indicator it will show the hint. But clicking it will do nothing. Right-clicking on the desktop will now not show a menu, but <control>+right-click will and I can then even e.g. open a terminal. But the terminal will not respond to the keyboard.

There is a similar issue with the keyboard. Once things go 'bad' and I am running firefox, the response to <control>+<t> will be to open a Terminal window instead of a new tab inside firefox. So it is as if the window manager no longer knows it has to redirect mouse and keyboard events to the firefox window.
What I can still do is <Alt>+<F4>. From the popup window I can now select to restart or shutdown with the mouse.
Also I can still use the mouse to drag around windows to the left, top or right edge and have them resized.

So it looks like mouse and keyboard are still working properly but somehow the events they generate are not delivered to the proper recipient.
Anybody have an idea what it going on?

Last edited by thie (2023-08-16 09:08:16)

ToZ · 2023-08-16 16:10:30

Hello and welcome.

Is there anything logged in either your ~/.xsession-errors or /var/log/Xorg.0.log files at the time that the issue happens?

thie · 2023-08-16 18:27:15

There are several assertion failures in .xsession-errors. However between the time the system works fine and the situation above arises nothing new is logged in both logfiles.

ToZ · 2023-08-16 18:35:19

Is the mouse/keyboard part of the laptop or external peripherals?

If part of the laptop, is it possible there is some sort of hardware failure? Given that its happened on two different installs.

thie · 2023-08-16 19:31:08

Integrated keyboard, mouse connected via usb port. A hardware issue can not be ruled out of course but it is a bit odd that everything just works until it doesn't anymore. And like I described it looks like keyboard and mouse event are still generated, they are just not arriving anymore at the right 'destination'. It smells like a software issue to me.

ToZ · 2023-08-17 00:52:59

thie wrote:

It smells like a software issue to me.

You would think you would see some error messages in logs somewhere then. Try running xfsettingsd in debug mode to see if anything is logged when the issue happens.

Do you have "focus follows mouse" enabled?

Also, did you upgrade from previous versions or install fresh?

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#1 2023-08-16 08:23:46

Strange behaviour - focus issues

#2 2023-08-16 16:10:30

Re: Strange behaviour - focus issues

#3 2023-08-16 18:27:15

Re: Strange behaviour - focus issues

#4 2023-08-16 18:35:19

Re: Strange behaviour - focus issues

#5 2023-08-16 19:31:08

Re: Strange behaviour - focus issues

#6 2023-08-17 00:52:59

Re: Strange behaviour - focus issues

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