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I've got a problem where my mouse cursor keeps disappearing when my session times out. I log back in and it's invisible, though I can still move it around the screen and click things. I'm in Lubuntu 15.04 and I've tried...

  1. reading as many answered questions as I can find
  2. installing gdm (says something is in use by another program and can't be installed)
  3. Using unclutter to switch mouse on and off (can't find a command that toggles the mouse
  4. Switching into the login screen and back (ctr-alt-f2 and ctr-alt-f7)

System reboot is the only solution I've found and it's quite onerous. Any assistance would be appreciated!

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  • I would first install a supported release of Ubuntu, such as 14.04, 15.10 or 16.04, which is going to be released some time on the 21st (tomorrow/today).
    – TheWanderer
    Apr 21, 2016 at 1:28

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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I have stumbled on this odd bug with a Lubuntu 16 on an Acer Aspire D250. Searching for a fix I found this workaround: pressing Ctrl-Alt-F1 and then Ctrl-Alt-F7 makes the cursor reappear. Works on my system.

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  • Yes, it works for me too, but is there a short script or command that could bring back the cursor without doing all this?
    – Yan King Yin
    Dec 29, 2018 at 7:54
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I found this looking for the solution to the same problem (this is still happening on Xubuntu 16.04, so updating to a supported release does not solve this issue). I don't know how to prevent this, but I can reliably recover the mouse cursor without rebooting. Open the display manager (Super + P) and make any change you want (change the screen resolution, then change it back. This brings the pointer back whenever a change like this is made. I took this one step further : you can use xrandr for this and map this to a keyboard shortcut. For my laptop I ended up setting Ctrl+Alt+Left arrow to run

xrandr --output LVDS1 --rotate left

and then Ctrl+Alt+Down runs

xrandr --output LVDS1 --rotate normal

so I can quickly rotate left then back to normal and bring the cursor back very easily. Still annoying, but easily overcome.

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  • For me, it is the use of Xrandr that made the cursor disappear in the first place...
    – Yan King Yin
    Dec 29, 2018 at 7:56
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I have one installation of 14.04 with exactly this behaviour. Don't know why, but workaround as follows.

  1. Bring up a terminal, Ctrl+Alt+t
  2. Hit return in the terminal window and the mouse pointer reappears.
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  • while in the terminal, typing xrefresh also seems to help
    – someoneb100
    Jun 21, 2016 at 19:55
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I just came across this issue (Lubuntu 16.04), and found an answer that worked here.

The Fix:

I added this ppa with:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers && sudo apt-get update

And then updated xserver-xorg-video-intel with:

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-video-intel

This seems to have fixed it for me.

Alternative:

According to the bug report, this was fixed in xserver-xorg-video-intel - 2:2.99.917+git20160325-1ubuntu1.1, so you might find that simply updating the package with sudo apt install xserver-xorg-video-intel works. You can see which packages will be installed with the following command:

  ~ $ sudo apt-cache madison xserver-xorg-video-intel
xserver-xorg-video-intel | 2:2.99.917+git1609021930.ebc066~gd~x | http://ppa.launchpad.net/oibaf/graphics-drivers/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages
xserver-xorg-video-intel | 2:2.99.917+git20160325-1ubuntu1.1 | http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main amd64 Packages
xserver-xorg-video-intel | 2:2.99.917+git20160325-1ubuntu1 | http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages
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