Mouse Pointer Misbehaving after update

[lah7]

@randalicia_lisa

E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

At this point, it would have been a good idea to have stopped before trying the next command, to prevent any further errors,. I think your connection went off at one point, and it appears that the upgrade didn't actually start, only some of the packages were downloaded.

Thanks for trying anyway.

(I moved the text to pastebin to avoid cluttering the thread)

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So what I'm thinking...

• Could just be affecting 1.10, since:
• I'm using MATE 1.12 (on 15.10)
• 16.04 has 1.12 already, not affected either.
• 1.10 could've been exposed by this compiz update.
• Could be a bug with GTK.
• The cursor apparently works in some programs?
• GTK is responsible for drawing dialogs, windows, cursors, icons, etc for some applications.
• MATE is based on GTK 2, currently porting to GTK 3.
• Unity is already GTK 3.

I could be wrong, I haven't read a line of Compiz code. I actually ran to problems with compiz yesterday over custom GTK 3 themes. Ugh, Compiz!

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So, what now?

The workaround best for the moment is to try reverting the update. A full re-installation is not necessary. Here's a guide I wrote to help:

How to install a previous version of a package

Sometimes, one bug fixed may introduce new ones, or what's known as a regression. This trick will allow you to roll back to the previous package version, providing you know which one. Warning This is an advanced approach, please take care and do this at your own risk. The Commands This assumes you already know which update caused the problem. List the versions apt-cache show [package name] | fgrep Version: For example, compiz may output something like this: Version: 1:0.9.12…

It's actually easier via the terminal, here's the command to copy and paste in full:

sudo apt-get install compiz=1:0.9.12.2+15.10.20151015-0ubuntu1 \
compiz-core=1:0.9.12.2+15.10.20151015-0ubuntu1 \
compiz-gnome=1:0.9.12.2+15.10.20151015-0ubuntu1 \
compiz-plugins-default=1:0.9.12.2+15.10.20151015-0ubuntu1 \
libcompizconfig0=1:0.9.12.2+15.10.20151015-0ubuntu1 \
libdecoration0=1:0.9.12.2+15.10.20151015-0ubuntu1

This should work in theory (am I missing something?) - but it didn't work in my virtual machine.

(VirtualBox is not a good idea for testing these sort of issues, the cursor was already invisible before I started)

I'm like you folks, I don't know the ins and outs of compiz nor do I develop it (or any MATE applications). We don't know when this pesky update will be reverted or even better, corrected. We'll have to wait and see.