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I have been using Xubuntu and Ubuntu on our older home PC for almost 2 years without much trouble until today when the mouse seemed to not work properly. I can move the pointer around and click but after a while the left and right click does not work. I can hover over a button and clicking shows the visual effect of lowering the button but it won't respond with the action required. It seems to happen sooner when opening a firefox window, but is not restricted to firefox. I have looked on this forum and others for advice and I have tried the following:

compiz --replace
metacity --replace

I have even reinstalled the Xserver. I checked the ximput to see if the buttons were not assigned but everything seems OK. I am on the 3.2.0-54 kernel and running Xubuntu/Ubuntu 12.01. And I have tried different mice on different usb ports and they all do the same thing. Help will be much appreciated.

Jacques MALAPRADE
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  • It seems to be only when I start firefox from the cairo-dock. – Jacques MALAPRADE Jan 23 '14 at 21:41
  • Please add the firefox & cairo-dock bit in the original question by editing it. I'm wondering what happens if you open firefox from the xfce4-panel; do you still get the non-functional mouse? Maybe it is the cairo-dock thingy that bugs out and botches the mouse. – landroni Jan 24 '14 at 06:30
  • I now noticed it does the same thing in ubuntu and xubuntu so not just a cairo-dock problem. I came across a site suggesting I should add the following to the firefox shortcut: GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=TRUE firefox. I have tried adding it to the firefox.desktop file as well as the /usr/bin/firefox file but they all seem to not work. I .desktop I added it to the line starting with Exec=.... I am currently testing something and it seems to be promising that is to add " GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=TRUE firefox " as a env variable before starting firefox. It seems to work but needs more test. Will get back... – Jacques MALAPRADE Jan 25 '14 at 12:22
  • Ok tried by rebooting and using the firefox from menu and running from terminal works but not trough cairo-dock. Rebooting again anf trying the env variable method again to see if firefox works. – Jacques MALAPRADE Jan 25 '14 at 12:32
  • From what I hear, this issue is only related to Firefox (whichever the DE) and not in other apps, correct? – landroni Jan 25 '14 at 12:52
  • Yes it seems to be only with firefox. I will be testing some more. I can confirm that setting the env variable does not always help. It worked for a while and then stopped. – Jacques MALAPRADE Jan 25 '14 at 12:57
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    OK. I can confirm it happens in other applications too. Although it seems to happen sooner in firefox for whatever reason. I just opened lo_calc, and a few others but as soon as I closed the mines game the mouse clicking does not work. It will show the button help message and when I click it shows how the button is pressed down, but there is no action taking place. I hope to change the original question above to include all these once we can narrow it down a bit. – Jacques MALAPRADE Jan 25 '14 at 13:21
  • Also, if you confirm that this happens in all DEs, then consider modifying the tags and title, too. Quick question: is the mouse click not working, or the mouse disappearing (and you don't really know where it is when you make a click). And did check whether the issue is not hardware-related; maybe a faulty mouse? – landroni Jan 25 '14 at 14:36
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    I can confirm it is not the mouse as I have tried other mice with the same problem. The pointer does not disappear. It is just the click action that does not take place. I can move the pointer around but can't click with an action. I also confirm it happens in Ubuntu as well. – Jacques MALAPRADE Jan 25 '14 at 14:48
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    I guess if I don't get any help from the community I would be forced to reinstall everything..... A pity. – Jacques MALAPRADE Jan 28 '14 at 10:36
  • I understand that the issue is.. distracting, but only 4 days of waiting for an answer is not that long. If you want to get better help, as I already suggested, improve the tags (for example, this question doesn't seem to be related to Xfce only). Also you could improve the formatting of the original question; use paragraphs. For code use appropriate formatting (e.g. compiz --replace). Otherwise it's difficult to read. Try to improve your chances of getting a useful answer by improving the question. – landroni Jan 28 '14 at 17:41
  • Your response is appreciated. I changed the code where I could. I initially posted Xfce put subsequently turned out to be in Ubuntu as well. I don't see what else I can do really, but I have to work on the PC and for that reason 4 days is quite long. – Jacques MALAPRADE Jan 28 '14 at 18:51

1 Answers1

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A distribution upgrade was what was needed:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

I don't know how but my previous kernel must have been corrupted.

Jacques MALAPRADE
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