OpenBox – Mouse Cursor Disappearing After Running Gnome-Settings-Daemon

fedoragnomeopenbox

I'm running Openbox 3.5.2 on Fedora 20. For extra comfort (font rendering, tap-to-click, …), I used to let gnome-settings-daemon run in the background.

Now since upgrading to the F20 beta, my mouse cursor is disappearing right after executing /usr/libexec/gnome-settings-daemon. That is it visually disappears; I am still able to click on things. But the impact on usability is unbearable nonetheless.

At first I thought compton were at fault, which I installed fresh out of koji. But removing it from my autostart doesn't change things for the better. The mouse is just fine in Gnome itself. There's nothing suspicious in .xsession-errors as far as I can tell. I'm really out of ideas right now.

Relevant system info:

$ rpm -q openbox compton gnome-settings-daemon
openbox-3.5.2-2.fc20.x86_64
compton-0-0.3.20121218g75aec17.fc19.x86_64
gnome-settings-daemon-3.10.2-3.fc20.x86_64
$ uname -sr
Linux 3.11.10-301.fc20.x86_64

The machine itself is a X121e Thinkpad with a E-450 APU, powered by the OSS radeon driver.

Best Answer

After further investigation, this post in the Arch forums revealed the answer. I used dconf-editor to navigate to org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/cursor and unticked the active setting. gnome-settings-daemon is behaving perfectly well now.

Related Solutions

Per-instance application settings in Openbox

Thunderbird, as a GTK+ application, supports a --class command-line option that sets the WM_CLASS property:

$thunderbird --class TEST &
$obxprop | grep 'OB_APP'
_OB_APP_TYPE(UTF8_STRING) = "normal"
_OB_APP_TITLE(UTF8_STRING) = "Mozilla Thunderbird"
_OB_APP_GROUP_CLASS(UTF8_STRING) = "TEST"
_OB_APP_GROUP_NAME(UTF8_STRING) = "thunderbird"
_OB_APP_CLASS(UTF8_STRING) = "TEST"
_OB_APP_NAME(UTF8_STRING) = "Mail"
_OB_APP_ROLE(UTF8_STRING) = "3pane"

Openbox supports per-application settings determined by the window class using the class attribute on an <application> entry in rc.xml. You can launch your two copies of Thunderbird with different command-line options and apply your window manager settings by the class you give.

Other GTK+ applications will generally support the same behaviour.

What are gnome-session and gnome-settings-daemon

gnome-session starts gnome-settings-daemon. The latter manages the data used in a session. The former tells it what to do.

Based on the description, you'll be more interested in the settings daemon than the session manager.

Further reading:

Difference between gnome-session and gnome-shell?

by default gnome.session starts gnome-shell and gnome-settings-daemon,
gnome-settings-daemon-3.20.1

The GNOME Settings Daemon is responsible for setting various parameters of a GNOME Session and the applications that run under it.
Package: gnome-settings-daemon

The daemon sharing settings from GNOME to GTK+/KDE applications
gnome-settings-daemon
This package contains the daemon which is responsible for setting the various parameters of a gnome session and the applications that run under it. it handles the following kinds of settings:
- keyboard: layout, accessibility options, shortcuts, media keys
- clipboard management
- theming: background, icons, gtk+ applications
- cleanup of unused files
- mouse: cursors, speed, accessibility options
- startup of other daemons: screensaver, sound daemon it also sets various application settings through x resources and freedesktop.org xsettings.
gnome-session-3.20.2

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