Cursor not visible when (re-) starting an X11 session with only a Wacom Tablet connected (without mouse)
Affected versions and setup
- Fedora 36
- mutter 42.1
- Only the Wacom Tablet is connected as input device, no "normal" mouse or touch pad etc is connected
- This issue appears only in XOrg, it does not appear when starting a Wayland session. On Wayland the cursor becomes visible when hovering the pen over the tablet.
Bug summary
When logging into an X11 Gnome Session or after restarting Gnome with (Alt+F2 & "r"), then the cursor from the tablet is no longer visible. It is there though, since I can see hover effects on buttons etc. Reconnecting the Tablet "fixes" the issue and lets the cursor appear.
This issue does not appear with Fedora 35/Gnome 41.
Steps to reproduce
- Start on the login screen (GDM, which happens to start in Wayland here), have only the Wacom Tablet connected, but no other mouse
- Start an X11 session
- Observe that there is no cursor from the Wacom Tablet, though hover effects can still be seen when moving the tablet pen blindly over favorites dock or other UI elements.
- Disconnect and reconnect the Wacom Tablet, the cursor appears.
Relevant logs, screenshots, screencasts etc.
Quite often, though not every time, the Gnome session also segfaults and restarts itself when logging in (or restarting Gnome) with the Wacom Tablet being connected. The retrace when that happens is https://retrace.fedoraproject.org/faf/reports/363671/ , that said, I'm not sure if this segfault is related to the Wacom Tablet being connected.
On a side note, I'm driving an NVIDIA GPU. Wayland is shaping up there greatly, though I'm still seeing a few smaller issues related to the Wacom Tablet when running a Wayland session (e.g. cursor not becoming visible when putting the pen away and returning on top of a GTK4 surface (like gnome-settings), cursor events sometimes not being recognized by modal dialogs (e.g. sound test in gnome settings), changed button mapping not being applied to non-GTK applications (observed with Electron applications like VS-Code or Discord, also Steam)). Should I report those issue, or should I wait until Wayland on NVIDIA progresses further?
Thank you for all your work on Gnome!