[gentoo-user] My X11 mouse icons have acquired unwanted borders. Help!

[gentoo-user] My X11 mouse icons have acquired unwanted borders. Help!

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Gentoo!

I'm using Gnome 2.32.1 in X11.

My mouse pointers have all acquired unwanted borders.  That is to say,
where there used just to be a solid black arrow, it is now surrounded by
a black outline enclosing a white outline around the arrow.

I don't like this!  I didn't ask for it!

I first noticed this problem while starting Firefox.  It seemed to hiccup
a bit (I think), and then all pointers (in all applications) went bad.

I've looked inside Gnome "preferences", but can't find a way to change
the pointers back.  I suspect this is an X setting rather than a Gnome
one.

Can anybody point me at a solution?

TIA,

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] My X11 mouse icons have acquired unwanted borders. Help!

[Jesús J. Guerrero Botella]

Does this happen on other WMs as well? To me, this sounds like a
driver issue. Some drivers (the binary nvidia one, namely) do have
some options to control the aspect of the pointer. I never played with
them so I don't know if this is one of the available options.

If you are using effects, try to disable them and see what happens.

Also, did you update the driver (whatever it is) recently?

-- 
Jesús Guerrero Botella

Re: [gentoo-user] My X11 mouse icons have acquired unwanted borders. Help!

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Jesús.

On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 01:41:21PM +0200, Jesús J. Guerrero Botella wrote:
> Does this happen on other WMs as well?

Yes, it happens on xfce, too.

> To me, this sounds like a driver issue. Some drivers (the binary
> nvidia one, namely) do have some options to control the aspect of the
> pointer. I never played with them so I don't know if this is one of
> the available options.

> If you are using effects, try to disable them and see what happens.

I'm not using effects, as far as I know.

> Also, did you update the driver (whatever it is) recently?

Ah.  I synched yesterday, and a massive number of packages were updated,
among them xorg-drivers.  That'll be it, I suppose.

Presumably I can configure these drivers somewhere, perhaps in
~/.xinitrc?  Is there any documentation for this?

> -- Jesús Guerrero Botella

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] My X11 mouse icons have acquired unwanted borders. Help!

[Jesús J. Guerrero Botella]

2011/10/16 Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>:
> Hi, Jesús.
>
> On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 01:41:21PM +0200, Jesús J. Guerrero Botella wrote:
>> Does this happen on other WMs as well?
>
> Yes, it happens on xfce, too.

That probably confirms it's not a gnome issue. The cursor is an X
thing, in any case.

>> Also, did you update the driver (whatever it is) recently?
>
> Ah.  I synched yesterday, and a massive number of packages were updated,
> among them xorg-drivers.  That'll be it, I suppose.

That package is kind of a wrapper around the driver packages, which
are many. You install xorg-drivers as a dependency of xorg-server, and
depending on your VIDEO_CARDS settings in make.conf the relevant
driver packages are also pushed as dependencies into your system.

>
> Presumably I can configure these drivers somewhere, perhaps in
> ~/.xinitrc?  Is there any documentation for this?
>


Let us know what your driver is so we can give more concrete details.
But video drivers, just like any other thing that's part of X, can be
configured at /etc/X11/xorg.conf or, more recently, in separate files
under /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/. Some drivers (like, again, the nvidia
binary one) do ship tools that can help you configure the driver by
writing to these files via a GUI frontend. The concrete options that
you can put into this files depend on the concrete driver. For
example, the man page for my driver (xf86-video-ati) can be seen by
using

# man radeon

There I can see all the available options.

If you let us know what driver are you using, then maybe someone who's
familiar with your driver can provide you with more accurate help.

-- 
Jesús Guerrero Botella

[gentoo-user] Re: My X11 mouse icons have acquired unwanted borders. Help!

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 10/16/2011 04:41 PM, Jesús J. Guerrero Botella wrote:
> 2011/10/16 Alan Mackenzie<acm@muc.de>:
>> Hi, Jesús.
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 01:41:21PM +0200, Jesús J. Guerrero Botella wrote:
>>> Does this happen on other WMs as well?
>>
>> Yes, it happens on xfce, too.
>
> That probably confirms it's not a gnome issue. The cursor is an X
> thing, in any case.

Er, the used mouse pointer can be configured by almost any DE.  You 
don't need to mess with X config files.  And I'm pretty sure it's not 
just KDE that offers a GUI config dialog for this.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: My X11 mouse icons have acquired unwanted borders. Help!

[Jesús J. Guerrero Botella]

2011/10/16 Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de>:
> On 10/16/2011 04:41 PM, Jesús J. Guerrero Botella wrote:
>>
>> 2011/10/16 Alan Mackenzie<acm@muc.de>:
>>>
>>> Hi, Jesús.
>>>
>>> On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 01:41:21PM +0200, Jesús J. Guerrero Botella
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Does this happen on other WMs as well?
>>>
>>> Yes, it happens on xfce, too.
>>
>> That probably confirms it's not a gnome issue. The cursor is an X
>> thing, in any case.
>
> Er, the used mouse pointer can be configured by almost any DE.  You don't
> need to mess with X config files.  And I'm pretty sure it's not just KDE
> that offers a GUI config dialog for this.

I assumed that the problem of the OP is not that s/he's not able to
set a pointer theme. Maybe I was wrong in that assumption. If that's
the case then this can be easily sorted out by opening the gnome
control center as you said, and setting the mouse theme. There are
many themes in the portage tree as well.

It can be set manually in ~/.Xdefaults as well. OR just by putting the
theme in /usr/share/icons/default/ or ~/.icons/default/, if my memory
serves correctly. You can pick any mouse pointer theme from
{gnome,kde}-look as well and install it as described.

I have no idea if the default X pointer theme has changed lately.

-- 
Jesús Guerrero Botella

[gentoo-user] Re: My X11 mouse icons have acquired unwanted borders. Help!

[walt]

On 10/16/2011 03:11 PM, Jesús J. Guerrero Botella wrote:


> I have no idea if the default X pointer theme has changed lately.

Yes, gnome-themes-standard just updated to gnome3, which I don't
much like.  The gnome control center doesn't have any way to set
a mouse pointer theme AFAICT, but the optional gcursor package does
the job.

Re: [gentoo-user] My X11 mouse icons have acquired unwanted borders. Help!

[Alan Mackenzie]

On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 03:41:32PM +0200, Jesús J. Guerrero Botella wrote:
> 2011/10/16 Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>:

> > On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 01:41:21PM +0200, Jesús J. Guerrero Botella wrote:

> That probably confirms it's not a gnome issue. The cursor is an X
> thing, in any case.

> >> Also, did you update the driver (whatever it is) recently?

> > Ah.  I synched yesterday, and a massive number of packages were updated,
> > among them xorg-drivers.  That'll be it, I suppose.

> That package is kind of a wrapper around the driver packages, which
> are many. You install xorg-drivers as a dependency of xorg-server, and
> depending on your VIDEO_CARDS settings in make.conf the relevant
> driver packages are also pushed as dependencies into your system.

My setting is 'VIDEO_CARDS="radeonhd radeon"'.  I've got two there
because I was never sure which one was the right one.  I've got a card
based on a Radeon HD4550  ;-(

> > Presumably I can configure these drivers somewhere, perhaps in
> > ~/.xinitrc?  Is there any documentation for this?


> Let us know what your driver is ...

Not quite sure what you mean here.  Do you mean my VIDEO_CARDS?  Other
than that, I've got two binary blobs in my kernel, radeon/R600_rlc.bin
and radeon/R700_rlc.bin.  (Again, I'm not sure which is the correct one.)

> ... so we can give more concrete details.  But video drivers, just like
> any other thing that's part of X, can be configured at
> /etc/X11/xorg.conf or, more recently, in separate files under
> /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/.

I'll go for a monolithic config rather than a fragmented one.  :-)

> Some drivers (like, again, the nvidia binary one) do ship tools that
> can help you configure the driver by writing to these files via a GUI
> frontend. The concrete options that you can put into this files depend
> on the concrete driver. For example, the man page for my driver
> (xf86-video-ati) can be seen by using

> # man radeon

> There I can see all the available options.

> If you let us know what driver are you using, then maybe someone who's
> familiar with your driver can provide you with more accurate help.

> -- 
> Jesús Guerrero Botella

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] My X11 mouse icons have acquired unwanted borders. Help!

[Jesús J. Guerrero Botella]

2011/10/16 Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>:
> On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 03:41:32PM +0200, Jesús J. Guerrero Botella wrote:
>> 2011/10/16 Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>:

Your doubts come to an end. radeonhd is dead, completely, unless some
necromancy has happened secretly in the last months. You should by all
means be using radeon, not radeonhd. But don't take my word for it,
just read their home page:

http://www.x.org/wiki/radeonhd

> Not quite sure what you mean here.  Do you mean my VIDEO_CARDS?  Other
> than that, I've got two binary blobs in my kernel, radeon/R600_rlc.bin
> and radeon/R700_rlc.bin.  (Again, I'm not sure which is the correct one.)

That's firmware, other than having it installed, you don't need to
worry about that. Your driver will be picked by X if you don't have an
Xorg.conf file. I am not sure what the order of precedence is when
looking for drivers, but I'd expect radeon to take over radeonhd. Your
log file (usually at /var/log/Xorg.0.log) should clear everything up.

But before continuing this way, please, read the other mail I just
sent as response to Nikos above. Maybe all you need is to find how to
set the mouse pointer theme. Did you try changing it? Since I didn't
see your problem myself I have no idea if there's something unusual in
the way that X is displaying your pointer or if it's just that you
don't like the look of it.


-- 
Jesús Guerrero Botella

[gentoo-user] Re: My X11 mouse icons have acquired unwanted borders. Help!

[walt]

On 10/16/2011 03:15 AM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hello, Gentoo!
> 
> I'm using Gnome 2.32.1 in X11.
> 
> My mouse pointers have all acquired unwanted borders.  That is to say,
> where there used just to be a solid black arrow, it is now surrounded by
> a black outline enclosing a white outline around the arrow.
> 
> I don't like this!  I didn't ask for it!
> 
> I first noticed this problem while starting Firefox.  It seemed to hiccup
> a bit (I think), and then all pointers (in all applications) went bad.
> 
> I've looked inside Gnome "preferences", but can't find a way to change
> the pointers back.  I suspect this is an X setting rather than a Gnome
> one.

Have a look at gnome-extra/gcursor.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: My X11 mouse icons have acquired unwanted borders. Help!

[Alan Mackenzie]

On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 05:08:51AM -0700, walt wrote:
> On 10/16/2011 03:15 AM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > Hello, Gentoo!

> > I'm using Gnome 2.32.1 in X11.

> > My mouse pointers have all acquired unwanted borders.  That is to say,
> > where there used just to be a solid black arrow, it is now surrounded by
> > a black outline enclosing a white outline around the arrow.

> > I don't like this!  I didn't ask for it!

> > I first noticed this problem while starting Firefox.  It seemed to hiccup
> > a bit (I think), and then all pointers (in all applications) went bad.

> > I've looked inside Gnome "preferences", but can't find a way to change
> > the pointers back.  I suspect this is an X setting rather than a Gnome
> > one.

> Have a look at gnome-extra/gcursor.

Just done that.  I've installed it, and it gives just four choices, all
of which have the border I don't like or (even worse) a shadow.  Other
than that it gives a file selector, which doesn't seem to be of any use.

What I want is to just to get back the plain black icons I had before.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

[gentoo-user] Re: My X11 mouse icons have acquired unwanted borders. Help!

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 10/17/2011 07:12 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 05:08:51AM -0700, walt wrote:
>> Have a look at gnome-extra/gcursor.
>
> Just done that.  I've installed it, and it gives just four choices, all
> of which have the border I don't like or (even worse) a shadow.  Other
> than that it gives a file selector, which doesn't seem to be of any use.
>
> What I want is to just to get back the plain black icons I had before.

Install a cursor theme you like.  They're in the x11-themes group. 
Personally I use x11-themes/vanilla-dmz-xcursors.

The default X.Org cursors are in the package 
"x11-themes/xcursor-themes".  It provides three cursor themes: 
"whiteglass", "redclass" and "handhelds".

The plain black cursor that most people refer to as "default" is 
actually part of KDE.  I assume that Gnome also had something similar 
and they might have dropped them in recent versions (it might suck for 
you, but people simply don't like them :-P)  You can see what cursors 
are installed in /usr/share/cursors/xorg-x11/.  If it's not there, you 
can't use it.

Again, I recommend you give "x11-themes/vanilla-dmz-xcursors" (white) 
and "x11-themes/vanilla-dmz-aa-xcursors" (black) a try.  It's what most 
Gnome distros use (the Oxygen cursors of KDE are a disaster.)

To see all packages providing cursor theme:

   eix x11-themes/ | grep -i cursor