Xfce Forum

wrh1728

Member

Registered: 2020-12-15

Posts: 47

Keyboard and mouse suddenly becoming unresponsive in Xfce session

This in Xfce 4.16 running in Slackware 15.0.

Occasionally, and all of a sudden, my Xfce desktop refuses to process mouse and keyboard events. This has happened to me a couple of times, always in the same kind of setting: I am invoking xv from a script over a series of image files. This works as expected for a long time. But then, all of sudden, my desktop becomes unresponsive to the keyboard and mouse. I can see the pointer moving on the screen when I move the mouse, but any and all mouse clicks are ignored. Keyboard presses are also ignored. Also, when I move the pointer to a terminal that event is also ignored - I have configured my Xfce desktop so that windows automatically get the focus when the pointer moves into them.

I know this is nothing to do with the keyboard and mouse for I have tried with different keyboard/mice combos, to no avail when my desktop is in the situation described. Also, the Ctlr + Alt + F2 sequence works; I can go to a different, non-graphical virtual TTY where the keyboard works as expected.

I have no clue why my desktop ends up like that. Like I said, whenever this has happened I was running xv as described above. Killing xv (and its driving script) from the CLI at the virtual TTY makes no difference whatsoever. I just have to kill my Xfce session and start a new one; after doing this the new session responds to keyboard and mouse events as usual.

Anybody have an inkling as to what may be going on here? If not, any suggestions as to whether it would be possible to fix this without killing the Xfce session? I mean, might killing some Xfce-related process from the CLI sort this out? I know that some Xfce processes, when killed from the CLI, get automatically relaunched immediately.